BRUSSELS — Although we may be far away geographically, the biggest challenges facing both Japan and Europe today are remarkably similar. That is to say, how do we adapt to the huge changes in our countries brought about by globalization and by an aging population?
Across most of the European Union, birthrates are low (currently an average of 1.5 children per woman), while life expectancy is rising for both men and women. More importantly the retirement of the so-called baby-boom generation, so those born in the two decades after World War II, means that the European workforce is shrinking and fewer people will have to support an increasing number of pensioners.
In Europe, we have clearly chosen to address the demographic challenge as an opportunity to support our economic and social prosperity, not as a threat. Studies show that Europeans would in fact like to have more children, so the real challenge is to how to make it easier for them to actually do so!