Introduction: the ageing societies of Central and Eastern Europe

Summary

Population ageing poses a challenge to society, with new problems as well as new opportunities emerging. The United Nations identified population ageing as one of the key challenges of the 21st century (UN 2002) – by the year 2050 2 billion people worldwide will be aged 60 years and over (UN 2007). At the moment, the effects of demographic ageing are nowhere else as visible as in Europe, which has become the first ‘mature society’ in the world where older people outnumber the young (Harper 2006). Today about 22 per cent of the people living in the European Union are aged 60 years and older (Eurostat 2006) and the share of older Europeans is projected continuing to rise. As a consequence, European societies are changing – a society with many older people has needs different from one with many young people.

The post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are facing an even more rapid ageing process than Western Europe. This is mainly due to an unprecedented drop in fertility across the region during the 1990s in combination with large numbers of young Eastern Europeans at the height of their reproductive phase emigrating to Western Europe and other parts of the Western world, thus reducing the share of younger people (Hoff 2008). Life expectancy at birth has also increased, thereby increasing numbers and share of older people.