Almost one in five EU citizens aged 65+

Old-age dependency ratio in Malta below EU average

Almost one in five persons in the European Union (EU) is aged 65 or over, Eurostat figures have shown.

This translates into 19.4% of the EU population, and represents a population of nearly 100 million people.

While in the EU the old-age dependency ratio was 29.9% in 2017, the percentage in Malta stood at 28.1%, just below the EU average.

The old-age dependency ratio is traditionally seen as an indication of the level of support available to older persons (those aged 65 or over) by the working age population (those aged between 15 and 64). It also illustrates Europe’s ageing populations.

In other words, there were slightly more than three people of working age for every person aged 65 or over. The EU’s oldage dependency ratio has been increasing for a long time. Twenty years ago, there were about five people of working age for every person aged 65 or over. Ten years later, the ratio was 4:1, and today it is close to 3:1.

In 2017, across EU Member States, the old-age dependency ratio was highest in Italy (34.8%), Greece (33.6%) and Finland (33.2%), followed by Portugal (32.5%) and Germany (32.4%).

At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest ratios were recorded in Luxembourg (20.5%) and Ireland (20.7%), ahead of Slovakia (21.5%) and Cyprus (22.8%). In these Member States, there were about five people of working age for every older person.

Over the last two decades, the old-age dependency ratio has increased in all Member States, except for Luxembourg, where it fell from 21.2% in 1997 to 20.5% in 2017 (-0.7 percentage points).

The largest increases between 1997 and 2017 were recorded in Finland (from 21.7% to 33.2%, or + 11.5 pp), Malta (+10.7 pp), Slovenia (+10.1 pp), Lithuania and Portugal (both +9.8 pp), Greece (+9.7 pp), Italy (+9.6 pp), Germany and Latvia (both +9.4 pp).