The Graying of the Globe

By : New York Times,
April 12, 2002

A United Nations conference in Madrid has been grappling all week with the implications of a startling demographic development — a world where there will be more elderly people than youngsters in coming decades. The developed nations passed through that transition a few years ago, prompting today's concerns over the adequacy of social security retirement programs and of health care for the aged in the world's richest nations. But now the developing world, poorer and less prepared to cope, is heading in the same direction. By the year 2050, demographers estimate, the world as a whole will contain more people aged 60 and older than children under the age of 15. It will be one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in history.

From one perspective, the graying of the planet is a huge success story, brought about by social and medical advances that are allowing people to live much longer and by population control programs that have cut birth rates not only in the rich countries but in poorer nations as well. But from another perspective, the transition will bring problems that will need urgent attention.

Delegates to this week's World Assembly on Aging are focusing, quite rightly, on the need to reduce the overwhelming poverty that is the main threat to older people in developing nations. They need the basics: nourishing food, clean water, clothing and housing. Once those are provided, there is the problem in all societies of subsidizing health care and retirement benefits for the elderly when there are proportionately fewer workers to support them. Older people will need to remain active, healthy and economically productive, especially in poor nations with no social safety net. On the darker side, delegates are seeking ways to curtail physical, sexual and psychological abuse of the elderly, as well as the looting of their property.

But perhaps the most needed change is attitudinal. The world will have to start thinking of its older citizens less as a burden on society and more as a resource whose experience and knowledge can be tapped, for the benefit of themselves and the societies they live in.