The Future of Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

But, then again, the aging of populations will reduce the number of workers in developed and some developing countries by many millions. The dependency ratio -- the ratio of people of non-working age to those of working age -- is a crude measure of the scale of the problem. Globally, the dependency ratio of non-working older people to workers has indeed risen over the 56 years, from 8.6 percent to 13 percent, and will continue to increase. Even in Japan, with its low birth and immigration rates, and an old-dependency ratio that has gone up by a remarkable 35 percentage points, from 9 percent to 44 percent, the total ratio has risen by a much more modest 10 percentage points, to 66 percent.