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Asia-Pacific
to Deal with Challenge of Ageing
China
Daily - September 23, 2002
SHANGHAI: Countries in the Asian and Pacific
region, home to the largest number
of elderly people, are uniting to find ways of caring for their
rapidly
ageing population.
With
over 320 million people aged 60 or more, or 9 per cent of the region's
total
population, urgent and appropriate policies are needed.
Populations
in the region look set to age even faster in the coming 50
years,
more rapidly than in developed nations.
This
is due to the rapid increase in longevity combined with decline in
fertility
that has taken place in past decades.
Within
the next 25 years, or in one generation, the number of elderly people
is
expected to increase to over 700 million, a figure equal to nearly 15 per
cent
of the region's population, according to United Nations projections.
By
2050, the ratio will surpass 30 per cent on the Chinese mainland, Hong
Kong
and Macao.
China
has 132 million people over the age of 60 and the figure is expected
to
climb to 400 million during the first half of the 21st century.
At
that time, the population of people over the age of 80 will increase to
100
million from the current figure of 13 million.
"The
rapid ageing of population has become a challenge, not only for
developed
societies, but developing ones as well," said Kim Hak- su,
under-secretary-general
of the United Nations and executive secretary of the UN
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
In
Asia and the Pacific, the family remains the main source of support for
the
elderly and traditional values, such as filial responsibility are still
the
norm in the region, with only minimal support from national government
programmes.
However,
experts point out that it will become more difficult for families
to
handle the responsibility of caring for their elderly relatives as
numbers
increase, while at the same time the size of the working-age
population
stabilizes or diminishes.
Kim
emphasized that the region should bear in mind the need to strengthen
the
family institution and intermediary support by the state, if the family
and
kinship networks are to continue their care- giving role.
The
regional survey on ageing conducted by the UNESCAP secretariat in June
2002
revealed that 80 per cent of the surveyed countries had adopted a national
policy or legislation on ageing or had established national mechanisms
to address ageing-related issues.
To
further address the issue, more than 100 government and non- governmental
organization
representatives from over 40 countries joined the Asia-Pacific Seminar
on Regional Follow-up to the Second World
Assembly
on Ageing which opened
in Shanghai yesterday.
The
four-day conference is aimed at developing a regional strategy to
implement
the adopted April 2002 Madrid International Plan of Action on
Ageing
and the 1998 Macao Declaration and Plan of Action on Ageing for Asia
and
the Pacific.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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