Population ageing or population aging (see English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of spelling differences In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language , whereas many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American) occurs when the median age of a country or region rises. With the exception of 18 countries termed by the United Nations The United Nations Organization or simply United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of 'demographic outliers' (see the Ud 2005 Human Development Report[1][2]) this process is taking place in every country and region across the globe.
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Overview
Population ageing is a shift in the distribution of a country's population towards older ages. This is usually reflected in an increase in the population's mean and median ages A population pyramid, also called age-sex pyramid and age structure diagram, is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a human population , which normally forms the shape of a pyramid, a decline in the proportion of the population composed of children, and a rise in the proportion of the population that is elderly. Population ageing is widespread across the world. It is most advanced in the most highly developed countries. However research by the Oxford Institute of Ageing[1], one of the top institutions looking at global population ageing, has concluded that population ageing has slowed considerably in Europe and will have the greatest future impact in Asia.
Among the countries currently classified by the United Nations as more developed (with a total population of 1.2 billion in 2005), the overall median age rose from 29.0 in 1950 to 37.3 in 2000, and is forecast to rise to 45.5 by 2050. The corresponding figures for the world as a whole are 23.9 in 1950, 26.8 in 2000, and 37.8 in 2050. In Japan, one of the fastest ageing countries in the world, in 1950 there were 9.3 people under 20 for every person over 65. By 2025 this ratio is forecast to be 0.59 people under 20 for every person older than 65.[3]
Population ageing arises from two (possibly related) demographic effects: increasing longevity The word "longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography or to connote "long life", especially when it concerns someone or something lasting longer than expected and declining fertility Fertility is the natural capability of giving life. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction . Infertility is a deficient fertility. An increase in longevity raises the average age of the population by increasing the numbers of surviving older people. A decline in fertility reduces the number of babies, and as the effect continues, the numbers of younger people in general also reduce. A possible third factor is migration.
Of these two forces, it is declining fertility that is the largest contributor to population ageing in the world today[4]. More specifically, it is the large decline in the overall fertility rate over the last half century that is primarily responsible for the population ageing in the world’s most developed countries. Because many developing countries are going through faster fertility transitions, they will experience even faster population ageing than the currently developed countries in the future.
The speed of population ageing is likely to increase over the next 3 decades (Lutz, 2008), yet only a few countries in the world have the evidence to determine if their growing older populations are living the extra years of life in good or poor health. A "compression of morbidity" (Fries, 1980) would mean reducing disability in older ages, whereas an expansion would see an increase in poor health with increased longevity. Another option has been posed for a situation of "dynamic equilibrium" (Manton, 1982). This is crucial information for governments if the limits of lifespan continue to increase indefinitely (Oeppen, 2002). The World Health Organization's suite of household health studies is working to provide the needed health and well-being evidence, including, for example the World Health Survey and Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) The Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health is run by the World Health Organization's Multi-Country Studies unit in the Information, Evidence and Research Cluster. SAGE is part of the unit's Longitudinal Study Programme which is attempting to compile comprehensive longitudinal data on the health and well-being of adult populations, and the ageing). These surveys cover 308,000 respondents aged 18+ years and 81,000 aged 50+ years from 70 countries.
The Global Ageing Survey, exploring attitudes, expectations and behaviours towards later life and retirement, directed by George Leeson, and covering 44,000 people aged 40–80 in 24 countries from across the globe has revealed that many people are now fully aware of the ageing of the world's population and the implications which this will have for their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world, based largely on the rationale of countering population ageing. The C. D. Howe Institute, a conservative think tank, has suggested that immigration cannot be used a viable means of countering population ageing.[5] This conclusion is also seen in the work of other scholars. Demographers Peter McDonald and Rebecca Kippen comment, "[a]s fertility sinks further below replacement level, increasingly higher levels of annual net migration will be required to maintain a target of even zero population growth."[6]
Ageing around the world
See also: Aging of Europe The ageing of Europe, also known as the greying of Europe, is a social phenomenon in Europe characterized by a decrease in fertility, an increase in mortality rate, and a higher life expectancy among native Europeans and Aging of Japan This demographic group increased from 26.5 million in 2006 to 27.4 million in 2007, a 0.7% increase. The Japanese health ministry estimates the nation's total population will decrease by 25% from 127.8 million in 2005 to 95.2 million by 2050Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled and Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the are the two regions where a significant number of countries face severe population ageing in the near future. In these regions within twenty years many countries will face a situation where the largest population cohort In statistics and demography, a cohort is a group of subjects who have shared a particular experience during a particular time span . Cohorts may be tracked over extended periods of time in a cohort study. The cohort can be modified by censoring, i.e. excluding certain individuals from statistical calculations relating to time periods (e.g. after will be those over 65 and average age will be approaching 50. The Oxford Institute of Ageing[2] is an institution looking at global population ageing. Its research reveals that many of the views of global ageing are based on myths and that there will be considerable opportunities for the world as its population matures. The Institute's Director, Professor Sarah Harper Sarah Harper is a British gerontologist. She achieved particular acclaim when she established Oxford's Institute of Ageing, and became the University of Oxford's first Professor of Gerontology. She holds the first Professorship of Gerontology at the University of Oxford. In 2006 she published Ageing Societies Ageing Societies: Myths, Challenges [3] highlights in her book Ageing Societies [7] the implications for work, families, health, education and technology of the agieng of the world's population.
Most of the developed world (with the notable exception of the United States) now has sub-replacement fertility levels, and population growth now depends largely on immigration together with population momentum which arises from previous large generations now enjoying longer life expectancy.
Ageing, well-being and social policy
Main articles: Dependency ratio In economics and geography the dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force and those typically in the labor force (the productive part). In published international statistics, the dependent part usually includes those under the age of 15 and over the age of 64. The productive part makes up the population, Generational accounting Generational accounting is a method of national accounting for measuring redistribution of lifetime tax burdens across generations from social insurance, including social security and social health insurance, & Pensions crisis
The economic effects of an ageing population are considerable. Older people often have higher accumulated savings per head than younger people, but may be spending less on consumer goods In economics final goods are goods that are ultimately consumed rather than used in the production of another good. For example, a car sold to a consumer is a final good; the components such as tires sold to the car manufacturer are not; they are intermediate goods used to make the final good. Depending on the age ranges at which the changes occur, an ageing population may thus result in lower interest rates An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by a borrower for the use of money that they borrow from a lender. For example, a small company borrows capital from a bank to buy new assets for their business, and in return the lender receives interest at a predetermined interest rate for deferring the use of funds and instead lending it to and the economic benefits of lower inflation. Some economists (Japan) see advantages in such changes, notably the opportunity to progress automation and technological development without causing unemployment. They emphasize a shift from GDP to personal well-being. In this overpopulated Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth world, population ageing resulting from lower birth rates is a necessary first step towards reversing the unsustainable trend of overpopulation - especially in those countries which are more overpopulated than others.
However population ageing also increases some categories of expenditure, including some met from public finances. The largest area of expenditure in many countries is now health care Health care or healthcare is the treatment and prevention of illness. Health care is delivered by professionals in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and allied health, whose cost is likely to increase dramatically as the population ages. This would present governments with hard choices between higher taxes To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law, including a possible reweighing of tax from earnings to consumption, and a reduced government role in providing health care.
The second largest expenditure of most governments is education Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another and these expenses will tend to fall with an ageing population, especially as fewer young people would probably continue into tertiary education as they would be in demand as part of the work force.
Social security systems have also begun to experience problems. Earlier defined benefit pension systems The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is an independent agency of the United States government that was created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private defined benefit pension plans, provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits, and keep are experiencing sustainability problems due to the increased longevity. The extension of the pension period was not paired with an extension of the active labour period or a rise in pension contributions, resulting in a decline of replacement ratios. In recent years, many countries have adopted policies to strengthen the financial sustainability of pension systems, although the challenges regarding pension adequacy remain.
See also
References
- ^ "UN Human Development Report 2005" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr05_complete.pdf. Retrieved 2008-05-03.
- ^ United Nations Development Programme (September 2005). Human Development Report 2005: International Cooperation at a Crossroads-Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal World. United Nations Development Programme. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780195305111. https://unp.un.org/details.aspx?entry=E05HDR&title=Human+Development+Report+2005%3a+International+Cooperation+at+a+Crossroads+-+Aid%2c+Trade+and+Security+in+an+Unequal+World.
- ^ United Nations, 2004
- ^ Weil, 1997
- ^ Yvan Guillemette; William Robson (September 2006). "No Elixir of Youth" (PDF). Backgrounder 96. http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/backgrounder_96.pdf. Retrieved 2008-05-03.
- ^ Peter McDonald; Rebecca Kippen (2000). "Population Futures for Australia and New Zealand: An Analysis of the Options" (PDF). New Zealand Population Review 26 (2). http://adsri.anu.edu.au/pubs/Kippen/pop_futures_A&NZ.pdf. Retrieved 2008-05-04.
- ^ Ageing Socieiies: Myths, Challenges and Opportunities Hodder 2006
- Gavrilov L.A., Heuveline P. Aging of Population. In: Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll (Eds.) The Encyclopedia of population. New York, Macmillan Reference USA, 2003, vol.1, 32-37.
- United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision Population Database, Population Division, 2004.
- Weil, David N., “The Economics of Population Aging” in Mark R. Rosenzweig and Oded Stark, eds., Handbook of Population and Family Economics, New York: Elsevier, 1997, 967-1014.
- Jackson R., Howe N. The Greying of the Great Powers, Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008 Major Findings
External links
- AARP International: The Journal - a quarterly international policy publication on global aging (2010)
- Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is one of the largest professional services organizations in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG study (2007) - Serving the Aging Citizen
- CoViVE Consortium Population Ageing in Flanders and Europe
- UN Programme on Ageing
- Human Development Trends 2005 Presentation on UN Human Development Report 2005
- David N. Weil. 2006. Population Aging. PDFPDF (59.8 KB)
- Jill Curnow. 2000. Myths and the fear of an ageing population [4]PDF (65.6 KB)
- Judith Healy. 2004. The benefits of an ageing population [5]PDF (215 KB) (link permission and copyright see discussion page)
Categories: Aging Categories: Human development | Gerontology | Demographic economics | Labor and demographic economics | Demography | Population | Demography Categories: Demographics | Branches of sociology | Fields of application of statistics | Cultural spheres of influence | Population A population is the collection of people—or organisms of a particular species—living in a given geographic area | Demographics Categories: Sociology | Population | Public economics | Demographic economics Categories: Labor and demographic economics | Demographics | Government budgets | Government finances | Public finance | Political economy
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Despite the rather distinct and specific characteristics in the ageing process across the EU countries, . population ageing. is in fact a global phenomenon. The specificities of the European ageing process are a legacy of the fact that it ...
