The Silver Sheen on the Netherlands A New Perspective for Regional Policy

Dutch economic science seems suddenly to have rediscovered how essential demography is to the economic development in our country and the western countries in general. The renewed interest is expressed among other things in publications, congresses and discussions concerning the significance of an aging population and its gloomy consequences for the active population, likely to go on diminishing steadily in future. For, as is pointed out, the latter group finds itself confronted with a steadily expanding group of senior citizens or senior non-workers, who tend to live longer than in the past, thus spelling serious trouble to the younger generations. Such worried statements are seldom heard from people who know how an economy functions, how for instance the system of saving up for pensions fits into it, and why at the time a system of apportionment for old-age pensions was preferred to one of capital reserve; probably that is precisely why they are heard so frequently.