利弊分析类大作文社会话题
In many countries, the proportion of older people is steadily increasing. Does this have more positive or negative effects on society?
（题目来源：2011年10月8日雅思大作文）
题目大意
人口老龄化的利弊
思路
人口老龄化的积极影响：1. 帮助周边社区；2. 减轻家庭成员的负担
人口老龄化的负面影响：1. 降低参与率；2. 提升依赖率；3. 扩大财政差额
审题，找出关键词
Older people
Effect on society
高分范文
It is true that the number of ageing individuals in many countries is higher than the group of young. While I accept that this circumstance can sometimes be beneficial to society, I believe that it is more likely to be outweighed by the negative effects.
On the one hand, the growing population of older people may have some advantages to our society. To begin with, the ageing population makes positive contributions to the community through their services. Naturally, the average life expectancy has increased nowadays, which means that people are more physically and mentally heathier than preceding generations. Given appropriate incentive, these people are willing to work and contribute to the tax revenue. For example, many health and welfare agencies are seeking to hire from the growing number of retirees. Another advantage is that this situation could mitigate the stress of family members. Young people are faced with the heavy workload as they want a better quality of life for their families, and the cost of living has increased so dramatically. In this respect, the expanding of older generation could provide childcare, financial and emotional assistance to their families.
On the other hand, I believe that the above positive effects are exceeded by following disadvantages. Firstly, having more elders decreases the participation rate to the society, which means that the workforce is expected to decrease. This shortage of workers could lead to the wage being pushed up causing wage inflation. Secondly, this situation also triggers the increase of dependency rate as there are more people claiming benefits such as pension and less people working and paying income taxes. In this respect, we might have a situation where working force needs to pay higher income taxes in order to support the increased older population. Finally, it will also have the negative impact on economy for the country because of the imbalance in revenue and expenditure to the government resulting in the increase of fiscal gap. In other words, it requires government to increase spending on health care and pension, whilst older people pay lower income taxes as they are not working. Consequently, it may lead the country further in debt.
In conclusion, it seems to me that the demerits of having higher percentage in older generation are more significant than its merits. (382 words)
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相关词汇
life expectancy
incentive
tax revenue
participation rate
dependency rate
wage inflation
fiscal gap
pension
