This is something the Bank has talked about publicly in recent years, and it has been a priority of the Japanese Presidency this year in the G20. Today I'd like to highlight the implications of population ageing for labour force participation. It is often assumed that population ageing will reduce participation, because more people will be elderly and retired.
But in Australia the opposite has occurred. This is also true for other advanced economies, with the United States being the exception. Although there are more older people, and older people do tend to participate less in the labour force than people in their middle years, participation rates in each age group have increased enough to more than offset this.