The ageing population might be our natural response to scarce resources

What causes ageing population? Firstly, increase in incomes could be one of many causes. When income increases, a family no longer needs more family member to support the family spending. Increase in incomes could be linked with the improvement of productivity. In addition, the increase in incomes also provides an issue of tradeoff between having more children and having higher living standards. Secondly, ageing population is a historical issue. As after the Second World War, there was a huge decrease in all countries' populations. Therefore, the population had incentives and had also been encouraged to have more children. At that time, there was a sharp increase in birth rates. Now the people born during the "baby boom" now get old and this is another cause of the ageing population. Thirdly, people receive relatively better health care and have higher living standards. When people now can live longer, the number of older people increases. These three reasons show us the ageing population might be a temporary problem. Moreover, it might be our natural response to scarce resources, as we realize the cost of having an extra child could be larger than the benefit that it brings to us. Therefore, I think the ageing population is a temporary issue and shows our response to scarce resources, after a certain period, the population will get smaller but have a healthy age structure.