POPULATION AGEING

Population Ageing

Population Ageing

Introduction

Aging is a progressive decline in physiological function, leading to an age-dependent decrease in rates of survival and reproduction. At the individual level, physiological condition at a particular age determines whether an individual lives or dies and how successful that individual is in reproducing. At the population level, age-specific rates of survival and reproduction summarize the underlying physiological states of the individuals in a population. An ageing population is defined as a population that has a greater percentage of people over the age of 65. Increasingly this is becoming a major social and economic issue for a majority of More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs). It is estimated that 3 of every 4 children born into the world today will reach the age of 60. This follows the statistics that show the percentage of people over the age of 65 in the world will double in the next 50 years.

Ageing population

The world's population is growing older, leading us into uncharted demographic waters. There will be higher absolute numbers of elderly people, a larger share of elderly, longer healthy life expectancies, and relatively fewer numbers of working-age people. There are alarmist views - both popular and serious - in circulation regarding what these changes might mean for business and economic performance. But the effects of population aging are not straightforward to predict. Population aging does raise some formidable and fundamentally new challenges, but they are not insurmountable (Kemp, 2003, pp. 737-760).

Although population aging is occurring in both developed and developing countries, Table 1 shows that the 10 countries with the highest shares of 60+ population in 2011 are all in the developed world (or are countries in transition, such as Bulgaria and Croatia). The picture will change by 2050, when perhaps most notably Cuba will enter the list, and Finland and Sweden, for example, will no longer be on it. Most remarkably, the UN projects that in 2050, there will be 42 countries with higher shares of 60+ population than Japan has now (Badiuk, 2002, pp. 35-41).

Table 1: Countries with the highest shares of 60+ population in 2011 and 2050 (percent) (among countries with 2011 population of 1 million or more) .

2011

2050

Japan

31

Japan

42

Italy

27

Portugal

40

Germany

26

Bosnia and Herzegovina

40

Finland

25

Cuba

39

Sweden

25

Republic of Korea

39

Bulgaria

25

Italy

38

Greece

25

Spain

38

Portugal

24

Singapore

38

Belgium

24

Germany

38

Croatia

24

Switzerland

37

Causes

Decline in Fertility

Society is constantly evolving, which is shown in people's ideals and practices. Formerly it was commonly known that the more children an individual had, the better, as they could help with the work and bring in more money for the family. However, nowadays there are various reasons why this theory has changed or is in the process of changing.

In MEDCs, the cost of having a child and supporting it through its youth is getting to be more expensive. As young adults are generally entering the job market at much later stages, parents ...