Population ageing and social expenditure in Australia.

Questions concerning the impact of demographic aging on the dependency burden in Australia are examined. "This article shows that the social expenditure to GDP ratio is heavily dependent on assumptions made about real spending growth, productivity growth, unemployment and participation rates. It produces a framework that makes the assumptions underlying the projections clear and enables the results of changing the assumptions to be easily compared. The projected ratios are significantly higher than those obtained in previous Australian studies."