Aging & Social Change: Fourteenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

In this paper we study an under-explored implication of population ageing, i.e., its effect on environmental outcomes and environment-related individual attitudes. In doing so we propose a novel classification of environmental outcomes: action-requiring and nature-concerning. The borderline difference between those two types lies in the level of individual engagement and effort required to fulfill them. Using data on a panel of countries over the 1995-2018 period, our findings reveal that whilst population ageing has a pro-ecological impact on nature-concerning environmental outcomes, it has no clear effect on action-requiring ones. Using survey data analysis, we also demonstrated that population ageing has a negative and statistically significant impact on respondents’ engagement for the environment.