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...transition, will move through it in less than twenty-five years. By 2050, more people globally will be over age 50 than under age 15.
The extent of population aging is truly staggering. By 2030, nearly half of Western Europe's population will be over age 50, with a life expectancy at 50 of another forty years. That is, half of this population will be between 50 and 100, a quarter over 65, and 15 percent over 75. Yet, in terms of numbers, it is to the developing world we must look. Two-thirds of the world's older population already resides in developing countries, with the absolute numbers of older people in these regions projected to double to just under a billion within twenty-five years and increase to 2 billion by the middle of the century. The majority of these individuals are already born. Indeed, we are tomorrow's elderly.
We are not talking here about the so-called age wave. Many people mistakenly believe that population aging is solely the result of the baby boom generation moving its way up the population pyramid. Rather, demographic maturing is a global trend that heralds long-term shifts in individual and societal behavior--changes that are likely to restructure societies for much of the foreseeable future.
Powering this maturing trend, in reality, are dramatic declines in fertility and increases in the normal life span. By the mid-1980s, most Western-style countries were experiencing historically low fertility levels. Initially, calendar measures of fertility indicated a plateau in reproduction during the 1930s and 1940s--what we consider the end of the classical demographic transition--before a further drop to levels significantly below replacement level occurred. However, generational measures reveal that fertility levels had been continuously declining, even through the end of the transition.
Perhaps fundamental norms regarding the desirability of having many children changed radically, or perhaps the economic structure of modern societies reduced the need to bear a lot of children. In any case, low fertility seems to be a characteristic of postindustrial societies: fertility in Europe, for example, remains below the replacement level of 2.1, despite increases in some countries toward the end of the twentieth century. Most strikingly, the past two decades have also seen a steady fall in fertility in Asia and Latin America. Total fertility rate, the number of children a woman of reproductive age will bear in her lifetime, has now dropped to 1.4 in Hong Kong, 1.5 in Singapore, and 1.8 in Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Sri Lanka and Chile stand at 2.1 and Brazil at 2.3.
While maximum life span has remained more or less constant, twentieth-century social, economic, and medical innovations have also enabled more people to achieve the maximum life span. Until very recently, for example, the second longest-lived person was born in 1701, with a life span of 113 years. During the same period, however, the number of British centurions alive at any one time was in the hundreds. This figure has now increased to some thirteen thousand, with eighty-seven thousand predicted by 2050. Between now and 2050, the number of centurions in Japan will also rise, from twenty-eight thousand to 1 million. Currently, the world has two hundred and sixty-five thousand centurions; by 2050, it will have 3.8 million. Overall, life expectancy has improved. In 1880, a female baby in Europe could expect to live to age 47; her great-granddaughter born one hundred years later can expect to live to 78. Her baby brother had a life expectancy of forty-four years; his great-grandson now has one of seventy-one. There is thus evidence of a rectangulization of the life curve in the West, with a growing percentage of the population reaching out toward the current maximum life span.
The eventual convergence of the maximum and normal life spans should be seen as a great success. For most individuals born in a society to reach the natural limit to human life in good health and with few frailties is a major achievement for any society. To accomplish this on a global level would be the achievement of civilization. For then we would have conquered poverty, disease, famine, and war.
We have already felt the impact of the factors associated with demographic aging--falling fertility and mortality, and increasing longevity--and those contributing to it--advances in living standards, education, public health, and medicine. But population aging promises to influence decision making even more in the new century and at every level--individual, national, and international. The social, economic, and political areas that this shift may affect include: the labor market, saving and consumption patterns, family and household structure, social interaction and networks, demand for health and welfare services, supply of housing and transportation, leisure and community behavior, and even geopolitical order. Thus, individuals and governments, in both developed and developing countries, must understand the reality of population aging in order to plan societal frameworks and policies appropriate for the demographic challenges and opportunities ahead.
Currently, the demographic burden hypothesis dominates public rhetoric. This hypothesis focuses on four pervasive myths. The first sees Western health-care systems folding under the strain of caring for growing numbers of older people. The second myth fears the ratio of workers to retirees will become so lopsided that many Western economies will collapse. The third envisions families...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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