NATURAL CHANGE IN POPULATION AND AGE DEPENDENCY IN EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS)

Abstract

The European Union’s population structure is progressively becoming older. This process has been going on for the last thirty or forty years and is expected to continue for at least another half century. The purpose of this paper is to present the relations between the statistics of natural change in population, and the demographic indicators of an ageing population: the median age and age dependency ratios. The analysis was based on the data from 2010 collected in twenty seven EU member states. The analysis revealed that current events of natural change may affect only the young-age dependency ratio. The structure of the population aged 65 and over may depend more on the long-term trends in natural change than on the current situation. The demographic situation in Poland is characterised by a low age dependency and average level of natural change. Poland belongs to a group of countries where the ageing process does not proceed so rapidly and is not as advanced as in Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia and Hungary. Its situation is nevertheless much worse than that in, for example, France, Ireland or the Netherlands.