Mature societies: planning for our future selves

As the new millennium begins, the world is entering into demographic maturity. Western Europe now has more people over age 60 than under age 15. Asia will follow by the year 2040, the Americas shortly after. But while Western Europe took more than a century to go through this demographic transition, Asia will move through it in less than twenty-five years. By 2050, more people globally will be over age 50 than under age 15.

The extent of population aging is truly staggering. By 2030, nearly half of Western Europe’s population will be over age 50, with a life expectancy at 50 of another forty years. That is, half of this population will be between 50 and 100, a quarter over 65, and 15 percent over 75. Yet, in terms of numbers, it is to the developing world we must look. Two-thirds of the world’s older population already resides in developing countries, with the absolute numbers of older people in these regions projected to double to just under a billion within twenty-five years and increase to 2 billion by the middle of the century. The majority of these individuals are already born. Indeed, we are tomorrow’s elderly.

We are not talking here about the so-called age wave. Many people mistakenly believe that population aging is solely the result of the baby boom generation moving its way up the population pyramid. Rather, demographic maturing is a global trend that heralds long-term shifts in individual and societal behavior–changes that are likely to restructure societies for much of the foreseeable future.

Powering this maturing trend, in reality, are dramatic declines in fertility and increases in the normal life span. By the mid-1980s, most Western-style countries were experiencing historically low fertility levels. Initially, calendar measures of fertility indicated a plateau in reproduction during the 1930s and 1940s– what we consider the end of the classical demographic transition–before a further drop to levels significantly below replacement level occurred. However, generational measures reveal that fertility levels had been continuously declining, even through the end of the transition.

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