I stumbled on this write-up while on my online survey and decided to share it with my fellow steemians.
Demographers have a phrase for a global trend: we are getting old before getting rich. This isn't the usual complaint that youth is wasted on the young. The point is that increases in life expectancy are resulting in the rise of average population age. While that is a very good thing in terms of success in basic public health interventions, particularly improvements in sanitation and prevention of death before the age of 7, the longer term consequence is that countries can expect fewer adults active in the workforce in proportion to the elderly population no longer economically productive.The point is often put in terms of a nation's dependency ratio, as the graph on the right portrays. But the dependency ratio, of course, is only a part of the story. For an understanding of what a high dependency ratio means for a nation's sovereign debt and investment grade status, and ultimately, the well-being of its citizens, we need to know about it economic resources and alternate needs for capital expenditures. A useful discussion of some of the many variables can be found at Globalsherpa.org, where the World Bank graphic was posted.
In terms of social policy, the challenge is to find the necessary public or private resources for supporting a growing share of the population who are elderly. The problem is a well-known and widely discussed one in relatively well-off countries such as Japan and the US, but even here budget projections for old-age pensioners and social security recipients are not encouraging. If that is a problem in relatively rich countries, imagine how big the problem is likely to be in developing countries where the economic basis for supporting more population in need of medical care, social services, and income transfers drawn from the wages of fewer younger workers.
While demographers have focused on the phenomenon for quite a few years, it seems to be all the rage in the popular press, especially with regard to China. Consider the following quote from the April 21, 2012 issue of The Economist:
"This trend will have profound financial and social consequences. Most obviously, it means China will have a bulge of pensioners before it has developed the means of looking after them. Unlike the rest of the developed world, China will grow older before it gets rich. Currently, 8.2% of China's total population is over 65. The equivalent figure in America is 13%. By 2050, China's share will be 26%, higher than in America."
REFERENCES
www.fewresources.org/ecological-footprints--human-impact-factors.html
