Population Aging Will End At The End of Century
A new study revealed that population aging for US, China, and Germany would peak between 2040 and 2070 but will end at the end of century.
Through the use of probabilistic population projections from the UN and new measures of aging, IIASA researchers were able to produce a new set of age structure projections for four countries specifically China, Germany, Iran, and the USA.
The key results of the study are the following:
1. For China, Germany, and the USA, the study showed that population aging would peak and begin declining well before the end of 2100.
2. Iran, which had an extremely rapid fall in fertility rate in the last 20 years, has an unstable age distribution and the results for the country were highly uncertain.
3. In the USA, the study shows very little population aging at all in the coming century.
The study was headed by Warren Sanderson, a researcher at IIASA and Stony Brook University in the USA, who wrote the article with Sergei Scherbov, leader of the Re-Aging Project at IIASA, and Patrick Gerland, chief of the mortality section of the Population Division of the United Nations.
The Study
Old notion categorized “old age” for people at age 65. But the researchers have seen a new shift of measures of aging especially with the dynamic of life expectancy. This led the team of researchers to conduct the study.
This time, the researchers used new measures that offer comprehensive view of population aging. One particular measure was the use of gauging life expectancy as well as years lived to adjust the definition of old age. Probabilistic projections produce a range of thousands of potential scenarios, so that they can show a range of possibilities of aging outcomes.
Warren Sanderson said, “Both of these demographic techniques are relatively new, and together they give us a very different, and more nuanced picture of what the future of aging might look like.”
The Downside of Aging Population
The growing proportion of elders is a global phenomenon. This is happening for both developed and developing countries. Amid the increase in numbers of old people, there are downsides attached to it.
For one, a larger population of old people will create unsustainable burdens on social support and healthcare systems. This means an aging population would cause an increase in pension and health-care costs.
