Ageing Britain needs more immigration

Some generalisations hold good. Young people, for instance, tend to be less hostile to immigration than their elders. This speaks well of their decency but also, as today’s report form the Office of Budgetary Responsibility makes clear, to an intuitive sense of their own self-interest.

If there’s one thing today’s Fiscal Sustainability Report makes clear, it is that the under-40s are going to need some help if Britain’s ageing population isn’t going to cripple the country. Of course, the standard caveats need to be applied: the OBR makes projections and projections are vulnerable to events. The purpose of these reports is to help provide a context within which policy can be debated. Policy choices will have an impact on future projections. Nevertheless…

The central fact is this: at present 17 per cent of the UK population is aged 65 or more but by 2061 that figure is projected to be approximately 26 per cent.