How Population Aging Will Challenge All Countries

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by Mary Mederios Kent

(March 2005) The world's population is growing older—bringing a wide array of challenges to both rich and poor countries, according to the March 2005 issue of PRB's Population Bulletin.

The Bulletin, Global Aging: The Challenge of Success, points out that people age 65 or older already make up nearly one-fifth of the population in many European countries, and that the share is rising. Authors Kevin Kinsella of the U.S. Census Bureau and David Phillips of Lingnan University, Hong Kong, argue that many industrialized countries may soon have more grandparents than grandchildren.

And less developed countries are also seeing their populations grow older, ushering in new social problems for societies that might have few public support systems. By 2050, 1.2 billion of the nearly 1.5 billion people age 65 or older will reside in less developed countries.

Falling Birth Rates Leading to the Aging of Europe and Japan

Population aging has been driven by low or falling birth rates that have reduced the numbers of births each year, and improved health and medical care that have enabled people to live longer. Italy is the world's "oldest" major country, with nearly 20 percent of its population age 65 or older. Japan, Greece, and Germany rank close behind.

Many European governments are concerned about the social and economic strains from a rise in the ratio of retirement age to working age people. But Kinsella and Phillips report that analysts see little hope of slowing the aging process. European and Japanese couples would need to have many more children than they now are to interrupt the demographic momentum of aging. And while immigration could slow the aging process, it will not offset that process unless it occurs on such a large scale as to be economically, politically, and socially infeasible.

Challenges Looming for the United States and Less Developed Countries

Japan and many European countries are among the first to grapple with the various challenges of aging that will soon face all countries, including the United States. The United States is much younger than most other industrialized countries: One-eighth of Americans are age 65 or older.

The graying of the U.S. baby boomers will boost the country's elderly proportion to one-fifth of its total population by 2030, still well below the projected elderly share in Europe for that year. But aging still presents a growing burden to the U.S. social security system and public services, and is emerging as a high-profile political issue in the Bush administration's second term.

Kinsella and Phillips point out that, while many less developed countries have successfully lowered the high birth rates that fueled explosive population growth over the past several decades, lower fertility has caused rapid aging in some countries.

"In less developed countries as diverse as Malaysia and Colombia," write the authors, "older populations are expected to more than triple in size between 2000 and 2030." They add that China is likely to have 349 million people age 65 or older by 2050—more than the current size of the entire U.S. population.

Other trends highlighted in this issue of the Bulletin:

• The world is seeing a rapid increase in the number of the "oldest old"—people age 80 or older;
• Traditional family support systems for older people are eroding in many countries because of smaller families and highly mobile populations;
• Older people worldwide are increasingly living alone than ever before—including more than one-third of the older populations of Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Denmark; and
• Older women far outnumber older men, globally, with just 46 men for every 100 women age 65 and older in Russia in 2004, and 71 for every 100 women in the United States.

Mary Mederios Kent is editor of the Population Bulletin.