A growing share of Belgium's overall population is greying, but nowhere is this happening as fast as in one region: Flanders.
Last year, the trend of declining births and increased deaths due to Belgium's ageing population resulted in a negative natural balance (the difference between the number of births and deaths), which is currently unusual in the country, but not for long.
While fewer births are being recorded, more and more people are entering the category of being elderly. Currently, the share of over-65s in Belgium is 19.5%. In Flanders, the figures are even more dramatic, according to figures from Statistics Flanders.
Already in 2018, Flanders reached the milestone of one-fifth of its population being aged 65 or older, but this figure has since already risen to 21.1%, amounting to about 1.43 million of the almost 6.8 million inhabitants in the region. "In 20 years, the number of over-65s in Flanders grew by almost 400,000 people," the agency noted.
Even more worrying is the fact that, not only did the share of under-18s fall from 21% in 2000 to 19% in 2023, but the share of the larger middle group (between 18 and 64) also decreased, from 63% in 2000 to 59% in 2023.
"The age category of people who are expected to enter the labour market in the comings years (18-to-24 age group) is now noticeably smaller than the 58-to-64 age group, of which most people are expected to retire in the same period."
Earlier this year, the Expertise Centre Dementia Flanders already warned of a demographic time bomb as the imbalance between the active, working population and the number of older people is increasing, putting a massive strain on services put in place to take care of the elderly.
Brussels keeping us young
The share of over -65s in Flanders is closer to the average for the European Union (21.1%) than Belgium's overall share. "Due to the younger population of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium (19.5%) scored somewhat lower in this respect," the agency noted.
By comparison, just 13% of the Brussels population is aged over 65. The latest figures published by Belgium's statistics office Statbel showed that, at the start of this year, some 161,500 people of the 1.2 million citizens in Brussels were aged 65 or older, while more than 274,700 were minors.
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Of the almost 3.7 million people living in Wallonia, 747,000 were under-18s, slightly more than the number of over-65s (718,838) meaning here too, an imbalance could soon be recorded, as is the case in Flanders.
Looking at the over-85s, they represent 3.3% of the total population in Flanders, and 2.1% in Brussels and Wallonia.
