NEW YORK - Population ageing is a defining global trend of our time. People are living longer, and more are older than ever before. Spectacular improvements in health and survival and reductions in fertility have driven this momentous shift, which has begun or is expected to begin soon in all countries and areas.
This change brings both challenges and opportunities as countries strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2022, the world marked the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing.
To commemorate this landmark, the World Social Report 2023 explores the economic and social implications of the ageing of the human population. It builds on the Plan of Action’s framework for national policies to create equitable, inclusive societies for people of all ages, providing recommendations to put the rights and well-being of older persons at the centre, across the life course.
Population ageing is an inevitable result of the demographic transition towards longer lives and smaller families. While the shift towards older populations is largely irreversible, collective actions and policy decisions shape its path and consequences. Postponing critical measures that allow societies to benefit from and adapt to population ageing would impose high social, economic, fiscal and health-related costs, for both current and future generations.
By contrast, with appropriate foresight and planning, Governments can manage the challenges from population ageing while enhancing opportunities for all people to thrive and ensuring that no one is left behind. As elaborated in this report, population ageing needs to be widely understood as more than just a set of discrete concerns mainly for one group of people who have advanced beyond a given age.
Ageing touches all parts of economies and societies, from health care and education to employment and taxation. Each stage of life can contribute to or detract from well-being at older ages.
EXECUTiVE SUMMARY
Population ageing is a de ning global trend of our time. People are living longer, and more are older than ever before. Spectac- ular improvements in health and survival and reductions in fertility have driven this momentous shift, which has begun or is ex- pected to begin soon in all countries and ar- eas. This change brings both challenges and opportunities as countries strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In 2022, the world marked the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing. To commemorate this landmark, the World Social Report 2023 explores the economic and social implications of the ageing of the human population. It builds on the Plan of Action’s framework for national policies to create equitable, inclusive societies for peo- ple of all ages, providing recommendations to put the rights and well-being of older persons at the centre, across the life course.
Population ageing is an inevitable result of the demographic transition towards longer lives and smaller families. While the shift towards older populations is largely irreversible, collective actions and policy decisions shape its path and consequences.
Postponing critical measures that allow societies to benefit from and adapt to population ageing would impose high social, economic, fiscal and health-related costs, for both current and future generations. By contrast, with appropriate foresight and planning, Governments can manage the challenges from population ageing while enhancing opportunities for all people to thrive and ensuring that no one is left behind.
As elaborated in this report, population ageing needs to be widely understood as more than just a set of discrete concerns mainly for one group of people who have advanced beyond a given age. Ageing touches all parts of economies and societies, from health care and education to employment and taxation. Each stage of life can contribute to or detract from well-being at older ages.
AN AGEING WORLD IS A SUCCESS STORY
Population ageing signals our extraordinary collective success in improving living conditions for billions of people around the world. Better sanitation and medical therapies, greater access to education and family planning, and strides towards gender equality and women’s empowerment have all contributed to, and in some cases benefitted from, the steady move from high to low levels of fertility and mortality. These advances have ushered in an era where rapid population growth is slowly coming to an end, accompanied by a gradual but permanent shift towards older ages.
Over several decades, both the number and population share of older persons have risen globally, while the number and share of children and youth have begun to shrink. By 2050, the number of persons aged 65 years or older is expected to double, surpassing 1.6 billion.
Currently, population ageing is furthest along in Europe and Northern America, Australia and New Zealand, and most of Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. In most countries of those regions, the proportion of older persons – by convention, those aged 65 years or older – exceeds 10 per cent and in some cases 20 per cent of the total population. Most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) are still in an early stage of this transition, while most countries in Central and Southern Asia, Western Asia and Northern Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean are at an intermediate stage.
Declining mortality throughout the life course has driven the increase of life expectancy at birth in most countries and globally. Greater longevity has accompanied a narrowing of the age range in which most deaths occur. In the past, death was common at all ages. Many children died from infectious diseases, for example, and women frequently perished in childbirth. In most countries today, “premature death” before age 60 or 70 is relatively rare.
Greater global life expectancy reflects underlying improvements in health. In countries with available data, the number of years lived in good health has climbed, accounting for most of the increase in years lived overall. Statistical averages hide broad disparities in life expectancy, however, including by sex and socio- economic status. In almost all societies, women live longer than men on average, and the rich longer than the poor. These differences stem partly from poor nutrition and exposures to environmental and occupational hazards that are more common among men and people with limited income and education.
In 2020, the World Health Organization and the United Nations designated 2021- 2030 as the Decade of Healthy Ageing. Its purpose is to promote strategies, grounded in solid evidence, that sup- port well-being among older people. It advocates for developing and maintain- ing functional abilities, recognizing that these depend on each individual’s intrinsic capacity, the surrounding environment and interactions between the two. The Decade builds on the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and aligns with the timing of the Sustainable Development Goals.
POPULATION AGEING BRINGS ECONOMiC REWARDS AND CHALLENGES
Levels of economic production and consumption vary over the life course. Typically, people in the middle phases of life produce more than they consume, generating a surplus to provide for their dependent children and others who rely on them for support and contributing towards economic security for themselves at older ages. The demographic transition includes first an increase and then a decrease in the share of working-age people in the total population. The initial increase occurs following a sustained reduction in fertility, which lowers the portion of children and youth in the population. The subsequent decrease in the relative size of the working-age population is driven by rap- id growth in the proportion of older persons.
When the share of working-age people is growing, countries have a window of opportunity to jumpstart more rapid economic gains. Reaping this “demographic dividend”, however, depends on maintaining or expanding investments in education and health, and on generating opportunities for productive employment and de- cent work as rapidly growing numbers of young people enter the workforce.
While consumption and production pat- terns change as people age, older people make important economic and social contributions at all stages of the demographic transition. Many continue paid employment. Within families, older people often provide financial support to other family members or assistance with childcare. Standard demographic indicators – such as the old-age dependency ratio – do not account for these factors, however (box 1). Further, many older people still encounter obstacles that limit their contributions. Age-based discrimination in the labour market, for in- stance, undercuts their full participation in the economy.
Older persons should have the option of continuing to work for as long as they desire and are able to do so. Nevertheless, the ability to work and generate income wanes sooner or later at advanced ages. As populations grow older, questions arise around how to support rising numbers of older people in the face of escalating pension, health-care and long-term care costs, particularly if equitable and sustainable systems are not in place to distribute resources among age groups.
The means of financing goods and services for older persons differ across countries. In more developed regions, public transfer systems, including pensions and health care, provide over two thirds of the consumption by older persons. In less developed regions, older persons tend to work longer and rely more on accumulated assets or family assistance. Countries at all stages of population ageing should take proactive and forward-looking measures to adapt and innovate in their labour mar- kets and pension and health-care systems to ensure that support for older persons is both adequate and fiscally sustainable.
Lower fertility opens doors for families and societies to invest more in the education of children. Higher levels of personal savings in anticipation of a longer life can spur capital accumulation, increased productivity and faster economic growth. This period can continue as long as the savings are invested productively.
To download the full report, visit: https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2023/01/2023-WSR-on-Ageing-web-EX.pdf
