Long may we live! Long may we live!

The report The Ageing of the Netherlands by medical expert B. Krol was published in 1965. Its findings fitted within the context of the 1960s, when there were numerous predictions about how many pensioners there would be in the year 2000. It asked what role the elderly would play in the future. The Netherlands Federation for Elderly Care referred to a report by the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS), which calculated that by 2000 the Netherlands might have a population of 21 million, 10 per cent of which would be pensioners. The CBS did not broach the subject of the consequences of an ageing population in combination with a falling birth rate, a reality that was not yet visible but was, nonetheless, already a fact. The report demonstrates both the great need for accurate predictions about the growth and composition of the population and also the impossibility of making realistic prognoses.