The European Union (EU) currently has to cope with demographic decline, low natural growth and the ageing of part of its population. To respond to this challenge, the Commission sets out a number of recommendations drawing mainly on the renewed Lisbon strategy to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by longer lives, whilst also sparking off demographic renewal.

Even as the 2013-2017 “migration crisis” is increasingly in the past, EU countries still struggle to come up with alternative solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways, Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror.This Report is an attempt to reverse the perspective, by taking a glimpse into the future of migration to Europe. What are the structural trends underlying migration flows to Europe, and how are they going to change over the next two decades? How does migration interact with specific policy fields, such as development, border management, and integration? And what are the policies and best practicies to manage migration in a more coherent and evidence-based way?

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

There is long-standing debate on how population growth affects national economies. A new report from Population Matters examines the history of this debate and synthesizes current research on the topic. The authors, led by Harvard economist David Bloom, conclude that population age structure, more than size or growth per se, affects economic development, and that reducing high fertility can create opportunities for economic growth if the right kinds of educational, health, and labor-market policies are in place. The report also examines specific regions of the world and how their differing policy environments have affected the relationship between population change and economic development.

Recoge: 1. Europe's demographic future - 2. The demographic future of Europe, from challenge to opportunity - 3. Green paper "Confronting demographic change: a new solidarity between the generations."

Advances in the engineering of sensing and acting capabilities distributed in wide range of specialized devices is providing at last an opportunity for the fundamental advances that computer science achieved in the past few decades to make an impact in our daily lives. This technical confluence is matched by a unique historical context where users are better informed (more aware of the benefits that technology can provide) and production of more complex systems is becoming more affordable. Sensors/actuators deployed in an environment (in this context it can be any physical space like a house, office, classroom, car, street, etc.) facilitate a link between an automated decision-making system connected to that technologically enriched space. This computing empowered environment enables the provision of an intelligent environment, i.e., "a digital environment that proactively, but sensibly, supports people in their daily lives". This is an active area of research which is attracting an increasing number of professionals (in academia and industry) worldwide. The prestigious 5th International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE'09) is focused on the development of advanced intelligent environments and stimulates the discussion on several specific topics which are crucial to the future of the area. As part of that five workshops were supported as part of IE'09. This volume is the combined proceedings of those five workshops: Workshop on Digital Object Memories (DOMe'09), Workshop on RFID Technology: concepts, practices & solutions (RFID'09), Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Ambient Intelligence (AITAmI'09), Workshop on Ethical Design of Ambient Intelligence (EDAmI'09), Workshop on Smart Offices and Other Workplaces (SOOW'09).

This edited collection takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the ‘Active Ageing’ agenda to enable readers to consider the implications of this phenomenon for the law, the workplace, and for working lives from a holistic perspective. Challenges of Active Ageing brings together academics working throughout Europe from different disciplines including law, industrial relations, human resource management and occupational psychology to explore and debate the challenges of the ‘Active Ageing’ agenda for equality law and management practice. Also including shorter contributions from law, human resource management, trade union and other practitioners, this book aims to fully reflect how organizations can adjust their practices to respond to the challenge of an aging population and extended working lives.

Contemporary economists, when analyzing economic behavior of people, need to use the diversity of research methods and modern ways of discovering knowledge. The increasing popularity of using economic experiments requires the use of IT tools and quantitative methods that facilitate the analysis of the research material obtained as a result of the experiments and the formulation of correct conclusions. This proceedings volume presents problems in contemporary economics and provides innovative solutions using a range of quantitative and experimental tools. Featuring selected contributions presented at the 2018 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics Conference (CMEE 2018), this book provides a modern economic perspective on such important issues as: sustainable development, consumption, production, national wealth, the silver economy, behavioral finance, economic and non-economic factors determining the behavior of household members, consumer preferences, social campaigns, and neuromarketing. International case studies are also offered.

This volume examines ten economically advanced countries in Europe and Asia that have experienced different levels of fertility decline. It offers readers a cross-country perspective on the causes and consequences of low birth rates and the different policy responses to this worrying trend. The countries examined are not only diverse geographically, historically, and culturally, but also have different policies and institutions in place. They include six very-low-fertility countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Taiwan) and four that have close to replacement-level fertility (United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, and France). Although fertility has gone down in all these countries over the past 50 years, the chapters examine the institutional, policy, and cultural factors that have led some countries to have much lower fertility rates than others. In addition, the final chapter provides a cross-country comparison of individual perceptions about obs tacles to fertility, based on survey data, and government support for families. This broad overview, along with a general introduction, helps put the specific country papers in context. As birth rates continue to decline, there is increasing concern about the fate of social welfare systems, including healthcare and programs for the elderly. This book will help readers to better understand the root causes of such problems with its insightful discussion on how a country’s institutions, policies, and culture shape fertility trends and levels.

Throughout the world, governments are restructuring social and welfare provision to give a stronger role to opportunity, aspiration and individual responsibility, and to competition, markets and consumer choice. This approach centres on a logic of individual rational action: people are the best judges of what serves their own interests and government should give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The UK has gone further than any other major European country in reform and provides a useful object lesson. This book analyses the pressures on social citizenship from changes in work and the family, political actors, population ageing, and the processes within government in the relentless international process of globalization that have shaped the response. It examines the various social science approaches to agency and argues that the logic of rational action is able to explain how reciprocity arises and is sustained but offers a weak foundation for social inclusion and social trust. It will only sustain part of the welfare state. A detailed assessment of empirical evidence shows how the outcomes of the new policy framework correspond to its theoretical strengths and limitations. Reforms have achieved considerable success in delivering mass services efficiently. They are much less successful in redistributing to more vulnerable low income groups and in maintaining public trust in the structure of provision. The risk is that mistrustful and disquieted voters may be unwilling to support high spending on health care, pensions and other benefits at a time when they are most needed. In short, the reform programme was undertaken for excellent reasons in a difficult international context, but risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.