Canada needs more immigrants to counter aging population, report says
A new analysis contends that Canada needs to accept many more immigrants to balance out its ageing population at a time when critics are challenging the country’s goal to increase immigration.
According to a Desjardins analysis published on Monday, Canada’s working-age population must expand by a certain percentage in order to sustain the old-age dependency ratio, which is the proportion of people aged 15 to 64 to those 65 and older.
It concludes that in order to maintain the same ratio as in 2022, the working-age population would need to increase by 2.2% annually through 2040.
And that group of Canadians would need to increase by 4.5% annually if the nation wished to return to the average old-age dependency ratio it had between 1990 and 2015.
