The work of the Centre focuses on policy-making for 21st Century demography. The central issue which the Centre aims to address is how should policies and institutions change in order for societies to adjust successfully to a large and rapid shift in the age distribution of their population.

A widespread assumption is that age-specific transition  or the structural ageing of the European population will lead to a demographic deficit, whereby the population of working age is insufficient to support the increasing proportion of older dependents. The evidence for this contested. The pool of productive workers may increase through increased female participation, lowering entry age into economic activity, or raising exit age.  This latter action also has the property of reducing the number of older dependents. Future structural changes in the labour market are also unknown. Some authors argue that technological advances will reduce the number of workers required to support the economy; others that there will be a shift in activity towards increased service employment, in particular in response to the increasing elderly dependents and their care needs.  However, the increasing internationalisation of the skills market may also attract European skills outside the region further increasing  the deficit. Despite these uncertainties, Europe is looking at migration as a means of reducing the deficit. There are however considerable uncertainties over the effectiveness of this. 

The two areas of primary impact are increasing the European fertility rate and increasing productivity.  These will have both short and long term impacts.  In the short term, Total Fertility Rate, number of children per reproductive women, is likely to increase, as migrant women tend to have a higher TRF than European women. This effect is likely to be short term as second generation migrant women tend to take on the TRF of the host country. In terms of increasing productivity, there is likely to be short term increase.  If the migrant stock is permanent, then they will age in place contributing to future enlarge deficits. If the migrant stock is transitory, then the increased fertility will have a limited impact on the deficit as the children, the future workers, will also leave the country and not contribute to the working age population (WAP). There is also debate over the future skills profile of the migrant labour force.

Much of this work has a strong international dimension, and aims to incorporate cross-country comparisons. The PCAP Centre aims to address 4 key broad questions:

• How can national health care systems best adjust to the need to move from acute medicine to long term care in a relatively short period of time?
• How can our financial systems best adjust to the funding requirements of ageing populations?
• How can we assist our populations to prepare for the long lives they increasingly will face?
• How can we ensure that resources are transferred in a just manner across the generating as the demographic dynamics change?

The PCAP Centre has identified 7 broad strategies for addressing age-structural transitions:

1. Adapt financial systems to longevity and dependency shifts.
2. Promote productivity
3. Evolve acute medicine to public health and long term care
4. Provide life long learning
5. Sustain families and communities
6. Facilitate mobility of healthcare, pensions and skills
7. Address environmental interactions

The problem is addressed through issue-based policy analysis (e.g. on healthcare and pensions) as well as analysis of the role of ideas of intergenerational justice in policy-making for demographic change. The normative policy analysis is further supported by:

(i)  comparative studies of policy in different countries or regions;
(ii) empirical research into current trends in the components of population change (e.g. determinants of variations in late-life mortality);
(iii) extrapolative projections and modeling (e.g. work on demographic and environmental futures);
(iv)  studies of patterns of intergenerational transfers. 

Over the two years PCAP work has been developed through 8 projects.
> More about PCAP Research Projects