Population structure and change

MSP: Scots should be paid to breed

Bishops urge Italians to multiply

Singapore has good reason to push for more babies

These three newspaper headlines suggest that the countries concerned are short of babies and young people.

Aging populations

Population pyramid - Italy 2000

Italy's 'pyramid' is similar to that of developed countries in Western Europe. It shows that:

• there is a relatively small number of people under the age of 20 (around 11million)
• there is a high number of people over the age of 60 (more than 13million)

Italy recently became the first country in the world where the number of over 60s exceeded the under 20s. This poses a number of questions:

• Why has this happened?
• What problems does it create?
• What are the solutions?