Abstract for: System Dynamics of Hypothetical and Realistic Demographics: Implications of Foreign Labour Policy

Understanding population dynamics is crucial to understanding current and future health care needs and designing systems to meet those needs. In this paper, we provide a methodological approach to answering questions of population dynamics in a system dynamics model configurable to initialise in dynamic equilibrium or disequilibrium. Some questions include: how does current measured population compare to a population of the same size in equilibrium, and how would a change from current observed birth rate to equilibrium birth rate affect population levels and the dependency ratio over time? To illustrate the methodology, we apply our approach to Singapore, which is experiencing an increasing proportion of the elderly population.