Academics are to outline potential problems facing Scottish finances as public services try to adapt to an ageing population.

University professors and Scotland's Registrar General will appear before MSPs on Holyrood's Finance Committee.

MSPs are investigating the impact of demographic change while budgets are squeezed following an economic downturn.

Warnings have previously been sounded on the future of policies such as free care for the elderly and travel concessions.

The Scottish Government has estimated that the population aged 65 and over is likely to increase by 21% between 2006 and 2016, and will be 62% bigger by 2031. For those aged 85 and over, the population will rise by 38% by 2016 and 144% by 2031.

The panel includes Charlie Jeffrey, head of the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, who looked at how devolution has served older people in a report for Age Scotland.

In the report, he said there has been a change in the way policies for the elderly are approached.

But he argued: "This still, and inevitably, puts the big, collective challenges in the foreground, in particular how to fund health and social care as a bigger proportion of our population becomes older, and how to fund adequate incomes for older people."

George MacKenzie, of the National Records of Scotland, told the committee in a written submission that the population may have reached its highest-ever level in 2011, exceeding the 1974 level of 5.24 million.

MSPs will also hear from Robert Wright, professor of economics at the University of Strathclyde; Dr James McCormick, Scotland adviser for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; and Carol Jagger, a professor at Newcastle University.

Source: Press Association