Health-care spending is a much tougher issue, because it is being fed by both the ageing of the population and rising per-person demand for services.
But it could also slow down the ageing of the population and, by changing the ratio of young workers to old people, give time for the creation of a decent social-security system.
We've also learned that, on unchanged policy, the ageing of the population is going to push up spending over the next 50 years as a share of the economy - while tax revenues would be broadly flat.
That is a stunning difference, accounted for almost entirely by the dramatic ageing of the European population.
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Mr Neil highlighted the impact of the credit crunch on the budget, Scotland's ageing population, the rise in population and the increase of people living on their own on housing.
It said that "taking in younger immigrants will help us top up the smaller cohorts of younger Singaporeans, and balance the ageing of our citizen population".
Because of the global population ageing, the number and burden of strokes will increase.
Martin Baily and Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC, reckon that raising actual EU retirement ages to the official age would offset the impact of an ageing population over the next 20 years.
With 17.4% of Croatia's population over the age of 64, Croatia's ageing population and the impact that has on everything from pensions to creativity is a huge problem for the future.
"As a country we are not ready for the rapid ageing of our population, " Lord Filkin, the Labour peer who chairs the committee, said.
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He said that the combination of an ageing population and fire service cuts meant that "the installation of sprinklers is perhaps the single most effective measure in protecting occupants of dwellings from fire".
The cost of providing health services is growing - by about 3% a year because of factors like the ageing population, cost of new drugs and lifestyle issues like obesity.
But much of the projections made by this committee and other bodies that have looked at the issue of the ageing population assume old age automatically means an individual becomes a burden.
The world needs to do more to prepare for the impact of a rapidly ageing population, the UN has warned - particularly in developing countries.
They are telling him of the problem of an ageing population.
The UK's National Health Service (NHS), which is hoping to slash the cost of caring for an ageing population, has tried to settle the question by backing the world's largest trial of telecare.
He said that considering the challenges of an ageing population, these are changes that the government - across the UK - can't afford to ignore.
While the hard right fretted over the rules of succession, however, many Japanese focused on some of the bigger worries facing the country, such as the economic slump, a rapidly ageing population and the perennial travails of Japan's working women.
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Mr Ryan's plan seeks to tackle the deficits produced by the growing health and pension costs of an ageing population, while limiting government spending as a share of the economy.
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Its growth has been slowing for some time because of the ageing population.
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In the most pessimistic version, investment and productivity growth remain weak, and the economy is held back by the debt it has built up in recent years, as well as by the ageing of its population.
This, the inevitable result of a pay-as-you-go system in an ageing population, is the cause of the programme's long-term financial problems.
They point out that the costs of an ageing population will weigh heavily on European budgets in the coming decades.
Some of this is due to an ageing population and some to a rising share of that population in the labour force: the so-called participation rate has jumped a percentage point, to 40%, while slipping for the population as a whole.
Although the mortality rate is predicted to continue declining, due to a growing and ageing population the number of deaths is expected to rise to about 182, 000 deaths by 2025.
Norway is salting away a big chunk of its oil income in a State Petroleum Fund to help pay the pensions of its ageing population when oil and gas production tails off.
Meanwhile Kaoru Yosano, the new economy minister with a clear sense of what needs to be done to overhaul the country's finances in the face of an ageing population, was ordered to cobble together a fiscal-stimulus package in response to panicky (and probably unfounded) fears that the economy was tipping into a deep recession again.
With the population both ageing and shrinking (the number of Japanese is due to fall by half by the end of the next century, according to the government), people are worrying about who is going to pay all of this money back.
Factors like the ageing population, rising price of drugs and lifestyle issues such as obesity means costs are outstripping the small rises the health service is getting in its budget.
And even if this is changing with the important advocacy of people like Dame Joan Bakewell, the ageing population is still seen as a problem.
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