Ageing in the Netherlands - The point of view of decision-makers in the public sector

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Within the next few years, significant changes due to ageing populations can be expected in sectors such as healthcare, local government, education, housing, justice and law enforcement. Pension funds and insurance companies will also be affected. In our experience, discussion on the subject of ageing tends to be fairly one-dimensional. More often than not, decision-makers tend to focus on how ageing might affect their own organisation in terms of knowledge drain and loss of production volume, or how they can prepare for an ageing workforce. Surprisingly, there is not much discourse on how ageing is going to change society as a whole and what this will entail for the future tasks public sector organisations will be asked to perform and the products and services they will be required to provide.

In order to verify our observations and make a positive contribution to population ageing awareness, we asked Dutch decision-makers for their points of view on this issue. Using the thought model we have developed, we interviewed nineteen leading decision-makers from various sectors on their insights, experiences and concerns with regard to population ageing and dejuvenation.