U.N. Report Sees Aging World
By: Barbara Crossette
New York Times, March 1, 2002
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 28 — While many
countries worry about a bulge in the number of restless young people with
no jobs and too much time on their hands, the United Nations said today
that the world's population is in fact steadily getting older everywhere.
"The changes that are going on are not
paralleled in any century before the 20th century," said Joseph
Chamie, an American demographer who directs the United Nations population
division. "We will see this trend accelerating in the 21st
century."
Mr. Chamie introduced figures show aging as pervasive
— not just confined to rich countries — and likely to have profound
implications on economies in all regions.
If there were fears of instability generated by the
idea of large numbers of unemployed young people becoming ready recruits
for militancy or criminal activities, an older population raises other
concerns.
As the United States has already discovered,
pressures mount on health care systems, health insurance plans and social
security as well as private pensions. In poorer countries, some of these
safety nets do not now exist. Sri Lanka, for example, has a rapidly aging
population and free health care — but no social security and few pension
plans outside government service.
The United Nations found that in richer countries,
people over 60 now account for one-fifth of the population. Predictions
indicate that the proportion will reach one-third by 2050. In poorer
countries, only 8 percent of the population is over 60 now, but that is
expected to rise to 20 percent by 2050.
With more people living longer and families getting
smaller in most countries, the fastest-growing age group in the world are
people over 80, the United Nations found. That group is growing at 3.8
percent annually.
United Nations demographers are riveted on a
statistic they call the "potential support ratio": the number of
people 15 to 64 who are available as workers to sustain the retirees. In
1950, the ratio was 12 to 1; in 2000, it was 9 to 1. By 2050, there may be
only four working-age people for every person over 65 worldwide.
On Tuesday, Secretary General Kofi Annan released a
report on the abuse of the elderly, in advance of a conference in Madrid
in April on issues facing the aging. It mentioned practices like
ostracism, which occurs in some societies when elderly women are used as
scapegoats for natural disasters, epidemics or other catastrophes.
"Women have been ostracized, tortured, maimed or even killed if they
failed to flee the community," the report read.
It also asserted that while physical, financial,
emotional and sexual abuse of older people is "grossly
underreported" generally, studies done in the United States,
Argentina, Australia, Britain and Canada show that the problem is found in
richer as well as poorer nations.
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