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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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