EU Enlargement: working age dependency ratio for EU candidate countries 2022

The dependency ratio is a measure of the proportion of a country's population who are either below the age of being able to take up full time employment or past the retirement age. A higher dependency ratio generally means that a country must fund a greater amount of public services used by dependents from a smaller tax base of full-time earners. On the other hand, having a high young person dependency ratio is markedly different from countries with an older population, as the money invested in younger people today will result in more full-time earners in the future. Countries with a very high old-age dependency ratios may struggle to fund their pension systems, as their are many people withdrawing with fewer people paying into the system. 

All candidate countries and potential future candidates have smaller dpeendency ratios than the European Union average. Asignificant number of countries have a much higher young-person dependency ratio than the EU, such as Georgia, Montenegro, Moldova, Tukey, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. The EU's high old-age dependency ratio is often seen as a key economic weakness of the bloc, as countries such as Italy and Germany have elderly and declining populations, leading them to have skills shortages. The youthful age profile of these candidate countries could therefore be seen as a benefit to the European Union, as it would provide the union with a larger pool of young workers. On the other hand, countries which are particularly wary of allowing countries into the union who may increase immigration within the bloc may look at this negatively, such as Austria and the Netherlands.