At the present time, the population of some countries include a relatively large number of young adults compared to the number of older people.

At the present time, the population of some countries include a relatively large number of young adults compared to the number of older people.

Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

(Band 9 Essay)

Some nations today have a much higher demographic of younger generation relative to the elderly. This provides a multitude of benefits like increased skilled manual labour and technically advanced individuals, which clearly outweigh the disadvantages such as lack of experience in various fields.

Firstly, young people are the main source for manual work. Any developed country with strong financial and industrial backbone today has one thing in common; the number of young individuals working in all the sectors of economic growth. Youth equates to mental and physical strength which is the primary demand for strenuous labour many of the industries require. This is a valuable asset which the elderly cannot provide. To illustrate, countries like Finland, where 80% of the population is well above 65 years of age, struggle to keep their industries running and have to employ foreign workers. This has had a serious negative impact on the country’s revenue for the past decade.

Secondly, Youth today is also well versed regarding technology since many educational, medical and industrial fields make use of advanced, automated tools and machines nowadays, the older generation is not thoroughly capable of aligning and calibrating with such advancements. This makes it difficult for them to perform effectively at their jobs.

However, elders do have the benefit of vast experience from years of working which is vital for the decision making. Due to lack of elderly experience staff, companies will have to incur heavy expenses to train new inexperienced recruits.

To conclude, it is true that the skills and expertise of elderly populace cannot be downplayed towards a country’s development, however, any country having a higher ratio of younger population as compared to older people will benefit tremendously for the aforementioned reasons.