Image: CEPAR Director John Piggott at the T20 Inception Conference in Japan, 5 December 2018
John Piggott, CEPAR Director and Scientia Professor of Economics at UNSW Sydney, has been appointed to co-chair the Think20 (T20) Task Force on the Aging Population and its Economic Impact and Immigration during Japan’s G20 Presidency in 2019.
Created in 2012, the T20 includes leading think tanks and research institutions from the G20 member states and provides research-based policy advice to the G20 members by preparing policy briefs to support an ongoing dialogue with G20 decision makers and other relevant stakeholders.
The Task Force on Aging Population and its Economic Impact and Immigration, which Professor Piggott will co-chair with representatives from the Asian Development Bank Institute and the Korea Development Institute is one of ten task forces launched at the T20 Inception Conference on 4-5 December 2018.
Professor Piggott, Director of UNSW Sydney-based ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research (CEPAR) said: “The G20 countries are all large economies, but they are actually quite heterogeneous – Germany, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and China, for example, differ significantly from one another in many ways.
“When it comes to population aging, there are countries that are already quite demographically old, and have developed social infrastructure to address aging – their problem is how to sustain those programs in the face of declining populations and workforces.
“On the other hand, Indonesia is a country which is quite young, but which is beginning to age rapidly, and which has yet to develop adequate social infrastructure to deal with this demographic transition. The speed of aging of emerging economies is much faster than that experienced by the developed countries of the global north, and this adds urgency to policy formulation.”
Over the next months, leading think tank experts will gather to discuss global cross-cutting issues, producing policy briefs that review the current situation, identify emerging issues and provide policy recommendations to the G20.
The policy briefs will be presented to the G20 members at the T20 Summit in Japan in May 2019.
Overview of all ten Task Forces 2019:
- 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
- An International Financial Architecture for Stability and Development/Cryptocurrency and Fintech
- Climate Change and Environment
- Economic Effects of Infrastructure Investment and its Financing
- Cooperation with Africa
- Social Cohesion, Global Governance and the Future of Politics
- The Future of Work and Education for the Digital Age
- Trade, Investment and Globalization
- SME Policy faced with Development of Financial Technology
- Aging Population and its Economic Impact + Immigration