Preparing for an Aging World The Case for Cross-National Research (2001) / Chapter Skim
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2. Our Aging World
2. Our Aging World
Pages 30-65
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From page 30... ...
In industrialized nations, the term usually refers to people aged 85 and over, while in less industrialized nations, where life expectancy on average is lower, the term commonly refers to people aged 80 and over.
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From page 31... ...
The number of persons aged 65 and over has increased by 289 million since 1950 and by 99 million just since 1990.2 In 1995, 30 countries had elderly populations of at least 2 million; projections to the year 2030 indicate that more than 60 countries will reach this level.3 Population aging refers most commonly to an increase in the percentage of all extant persons who have lived to or beyond a certain age. While the size of the world's elderly population has been increasing for centuries, it is only in recent decades that the proportion has caught the attention of researchers and policy makers.
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From page 32... ...
Europe has had the highest proportions of population aged 65 and over among major world regions for many decades and should remain the global leader in this regard well into the 21st century (see Table 2-1~. TABLE 2-1 Percent Elderly, by Age and Region: 2000 to 2050 65 Years 75 Years 80 Years Region Year and Over and Over and Over Europe 2000 14.0 5.6 2.8 2015 16.3 7.7 4.3 2030 23.1 10.8 6.3 2050 28.6 15.7 10.2 North America 2000 12.6 6.0 3.3 2015 14.8 6.3 3.8 2030 20.3 9.4 5.4 2050 20.7 11.6 8.0 Oceania 2000 10.2 4.5 2.4 2015 12.7 5.4 3.2 2030 16.3 7.5 4.4 2050 20.0 10.6 6.6 Asia 2000 5.9 1.9 0.8 2015 7.7 2.7 1.3 2030 11.9 4.5 2.2 2050 18.0 8.5 4.9 Latin America/Caribbean 2000 5.5 1.9 0.9 2015 7.4 2.8 1.5 2030 11.6 4.5 2.4 2050 18.1 8.4 4.9 Near East/North Africa 2000 4.3 1.4 0.6 2015 5.2 1.8 0.9 2030 8.1 2.8 1.3 2050 13.3 5.4 2.9 Sub-Saharan Africa 2000 2.9 0.8 0.3 2015 3.1 1.0 0.4 2030 3.7 1.3 0.6 2050 5.3 1.8 0.9 SOURCE: U.S.
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From page 33... ...
Although the change in percent elderly in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2015 in Table 2-1 is barely perceptible, the size of the elderly population is expected to increase by 50 percent, from 19.3 to 28.9 million people. Sometimes lost amid the attention paid to population aging in Europe and North America is the fact that older populations in developing countries typically are growing more rapidly than those in the industrialized world.5 As noted earlier, the net balance of the world's elderly population was increasing by more than 750,000 persons each month at the end of the 1990s; 80 percent of this change was occurring in the developing world.
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From page 35... ...
Figure 2-3 shows the estimated percent distribution of the world's population aged 80 and over at the turn of the century. There is substantial international variation in the projected age components of elderly populations.
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From page 36... ...
2010 will keep the overall elderly population relatively young. Because of differences in past fertility and mortality trends, some European nations will experience a sustained rise in the share of the oldest old among their elderly populations, while others will see an increase during the next two decades and then a subsequent decline.
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From page 37... ...
For instance, it took only a quarter of a century for the proportion of population aged 65 and over in lapan to increase from 7 to 14 percent (see Figure
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From page 38... ...
Tunisia (2020-2035) 115 74 68 64 53 46 45 45 26 30 28 27 27 25 22 21 21 18 85 FIGURE 2-5 Speed of population aging (number of years required or expected for percent of population aged 65 and over to rise from 7% to 14%)
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From page 39... ...
The concept of median age encourages a broader view of population aging that focuses less on the elderly population per se. In many developing countries, the initial effects of population aging will be seen in the relative growth of young and middle-aged adult populations.
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From page 40... ...
However, measures such as the elderly support ratio also embody questionable assumptions that make them of limited analytical use (see Box 2-1~. 7Given its aggregate nature, the aging index may be more useful for examining withincountry differences in the level of population aging than for tracking national-level changes.
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From page 41... ...
Populations with high fertility tend to have low proportions of older persons and vice versa. Current total fertility rates in excess of 6 children per woman usually correlate with elderly population shares of less than 3 percent.
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Other things being equal, this initial decline in mortality produces a younger population age structure as more babies and young children survive the
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The generally sustained decrease in total fertility rates in industrialized nations since at least 1900 has resulted in current levels below the population replacement rate of 2.1 live births per woman in most such nations. Persistent low fertility since the late 1970s has led to a decline in the size of successive birth cohorts and a corresponding increase in the proportion of older relative to younger persons.
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From page 45... ...
Total fertility in many developing countries notably Chile, China, South Korea, Thailand, and at least a dozen Caribbean nations is now at or below replacement level. Figure 2-8 illustrates the historical and projected transition in population age structure in developed and developing countries.
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From page 46... ...
so+ 75-79 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5-9 0-4 _= =1_ Male ~ Female ~_ _ ~Developing countries Developed countries 400 300 200 100 0 100 200 FIGURE 2-8c Population, by age and sex: 2030 (in millions)
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From page 47... ...
A growing research consensus attributes the gain in human longevity since the early 1800s to a complex interplay of advances in medicine and public health coupled with new modes of familial, social, economic, and political organization, as well as related behavioral changes (Preston and Haines, 1991; Moore, 1993~. Although the effect of fertility decline is usually the driving force behind changing population age structures, changes in mortality assume much more importance as countries reach lower levels of fertility (Caselli and Vallin, 1990; Gjonca et al., 1999~.
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From page 48... ...
Asia China India Kazakhstan South Korea Syria Thailand Latin America Argentina Brazil Costa Rica Chile Mexico Venezuela 37.8 39.9 62.0 67.0 74.5 81.0 45.4 48.9 62.1 67.4 74.5 81.3 51.6 54.8 68.9 71.5 74.0 79.3 45.3 48.7 63.7 69.4 74.9 82.9 43.8 46.6 64.6 68.5 74.3 80.8 52.3 55.8 70.3 73.8 75.7 81.8 52.8 55.3 69.9 72.6 77.0 82.4 46.4 50.1 66.2 71.1 75.0 80.5 38.9 41.7 60.9 65.5 71.0 38.1 39.7 63.4 66.7 75.9 36.6 38.2 59.3 63.4 67.0 42.9 43.2 63.7 67.2 75.9 33.9 35.7 59.8 64.3 75.3 53.2 56.8 66.7 42.8 44.3 59.6 48.3 51.1 66.0 78.2 81.2 76.1 82.4 82.5 71.8 63.1 71.7 76.9 77.5 74.2 82.7 84.1 79.9 41.2 43.6 61.3 65.5 40.4 43.6 56.1 58.8 31.1 34.0 45.5 47.9 44.0 46.0 50.4 51.8 38.5 41.6 42.2 43.7 37.5 40.6 44.5 50.5 39.3 42.3 69.6 73.3 39.4 38.0 61.9 63.1 51.6 61.9 57.7 68.9 46.0 49.0 70.8 78.5 44.8 47.2 67.4 69.6 45.0 49.1 65.3 72.0 60.4 65.1 71.7 78.6 49.3 52.8 58.5 67.6 56.0 58.6 73.3 78.5 57.8 61.3 72.4 79.2 49.2 52.4 68.5 74.7 53.8 56.6 70.1 76.3 aFigures for Germany and Czech Republic prior to 1999 refer to the former West Germany and Czechoslovakia, respectively. bReliable estimates for 1900 for most developing countries are unavailable.
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From page 49... ...
While Costa Rica, Taiwan, and numerous Caribbean island nations enjoy levels that match or exceed those of many European nations, the normal lifetime in other countries spans fewer than 45 years. Aggregate life expectancy at birth in Latin America (69 years)
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From page 50... ...
Projections to the year 2010 suggest that AIDS will continue to reduce average life expectancy at birth by more than 25 years from otherwise-expected levels in countries such as Botswana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe (Stanecki and Way, 1999~. The impact on future population age structure and overall population aging is less striking insofar as the effects of a long-term epidemic become more evenly distributed across age groups.
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From page 51... ...
Likewise, while characteristics of parents are among the more crucial determinants of the risk of death in childhood, it is less reliable to use the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents as proxies for those of deceased individuals when studying adult mortality differentials (Timaeus, 1993~. A more onerous problem in measuring older-age mortality, of course, is age misreporting.
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From page 52... ...
Myers (1996) used a decompositional technique to assess the agespecific impact of mortality decline on overall changes in life expectancy during the period 1950-1990 in six industrialized nations.
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From page 53... ...
The conditional probability of death under the age of 50 declined more than 70 percent for both men and women, with smaller declines after age 50. Because mortality rates are now so low at younger and middle ages, any significant additional gains in life expectancy must come from reductions in death rates among older population groups.
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From page 54... ...
indicates that, with the exception of Belize around 1970, there was an unmistakable decline in Latin American/Caribbean death rates at age 65 during the second half of the 20th century and a corresponding increase in the number of years of life remaining for those persons who reach age 65. Gains for women typically were greater than for men; in Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Peru, more than 5 years was added to female life expectancy at age 65 between 1950 and 1990.
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In France, standardized death rates at ages 65-74
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(1991) have shown for several Latin American countries, the "typical" stages of epidemiological transition may not follow a sequential order, but may in fact overlap or even reverse direction.
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Current and future mortality trends are of increasing concern to social scientists and policy planners because assumptions about these trends vary considerably and may have surprisingly divergent implications for future programs. Past population projections often have underestimated improvements in mortality rates, particularly among the oldest old.
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From page 58... ...
assessment projects 817 million elderly, 57 million and roughly 8 percent more than forecast in 1980. On a national level, consistently low projections of the elderly population poorly serve planning in such areas as health care costs and delivery systems, pension scheme payouts, and housing design.
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From page 59... ...
Bureau of the Census and the U.S. Social Security Administration.
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From page 60... ...
generated an extreme upper bound projection of 54 million people aged 85 and over in the United States in 2040. While this and other projections are perhaps not the most likely, they underscore the potential impact of changes in adult mortality on the future size of the very old population and demonstrate the uncertainty inherent in projections of numbers and age composition.
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From page 61... ...
In Health and Mortality Among Elderly Populations, G Caselli and A.D.
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From page 62... ...
Kim, Y.J., and R Schoen 1997 Population momentum expresses population aging.
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From page 63... ...
1990 Mortality Trends in the ECE Region: Prospects and Implications. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Seminar on Demographic and Economic Consequences and Implications of Changing Population Age Structures, Ottawa, 2428 September.
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From page 64... ...
graphic Causes and Consequences of Population Aging, G.J. Stolnitz, ed.
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From page 65... ...
Vaupel, eds. Monograph on Population Aging 2.
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