EU Enlargement: working age dependency ratio for EU candidate countries 2022

The dependency ratio is a measure of the proportion of a country's population who are either below the age of being able to take up full time employment or past the retirement age. A higher dependency ratio generally means that a country must fund a greater amount of public services used by dependents from a smaller tax base of full-time earners. On the other hand, having a high young person dependency ratio is markedly different from countries with an older population, as the money invested in younger people today will result in more full-time earners in the future. Countries with a very high old-age dependency ratios may struggle to fund their pension systems, as their are many people withdrawing with fewer people paying into the system. All candidate countries and potential future candidates have smaller dpeendency ratios than the European Union average. Asignificant number of countries have a much higher young-person dependency ratio than the EU, such as Georgia, Montenegro, Moldova, Tukey, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. The EU's high old-age dependency ratio is often seen as a key economic weakness of the bloc, as countries such as Italy and Germany have elderly and declining populations, leading them to have skills shortages. The youthful age profile of these candidate countries could therefore be seen as a benefit to the European Union, as it would provide the union with a larger pool of young workers. On the other hand, countries which are particularly wary of allowing countries into the union who may increase immigration within the bloc may look at this negatively, such as Austria and the Netherlands.

依赖比是指一个国家人口中，处于无法从事全职就业年龄之下或已超过退休年龄的群体所占的比例。通常情况下，依赖比越高，意味着一个国家必须从较小的全职工作者税基中资助更多的公共服务业，以供依赖者使用。另一方面，高比例的年轻人口依赖性与老年人口国家的依赖性有显著区别，因为今日对年轻人的投资将导致未来有更多的全职工作者。那些老龄人口依赖比极高的国家可能难以资助其养老金体系，因为退休人数众多而缴纳系统的人却较少。所有候选国及潜在的未来候选国的依赖比均低于欧盟平均水平。许多国家，如格鲁吉亚、黑山、摩尔多瓦、土耳其、科索沃和北马其顿，其年轻人口依赖比远高于欧盟。欧盟的老龄人口依赖比常被视为该经济体的关键弱点，因为如意大利和德国等国家拥有老年人口并呈下降趋势，导致技能短缺。因此，这些候选国的年轻人口结构可以被视为对欧盟的一种利益，因为它将为联盟提供更广泛的年轻劳动力库。然而，对于那些特别警惕可能增加移民数量的国家加入欧盟的国家来说，这种年轻人口结构可能被视为负面影响，例如奥地利和荷兰。