The baby boom turns into a geriatric boom! Together with the decreasing mortality of adults, there is drastic growth in the number of people needing some old age services. During the first few years, there is remarkable growth in the number of school-aged children, and two decades later, a substantial increase in the figures for university students, then another four decades of a large work force, followed by a few decades with a large population of retired people. In the absence of major migration, the population structure is quite predictable for several decades (almost a century, in fact). The immediate result of these trends of mortality and birth patterns is the experiences of “baby booms.” This is expressed by growth in the number of surviving children. The fertility ratio continues to drop to around 1.5 and lower-meaning that these populations are shrinking, unless there is a significant inflow of immigrants in a country. At fertility rates around two per mother, the natural growth of a population stops (or even turns into a slow decline). The average number of births per woman can be around five to six in the least-developed countries, and this fertility rate slowly declines to around two births per woman. The interaction with declining mortality means that the number of births declines slowly, but the number of surviving children per mother grows rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) statistics show that in many less-developed countries, the use of contraceptives is limited to just 5 to 15 percent of the population, compared to about three-quarters of the population in the developed countries. This outcome is not just a technical matter of faster spread and wider use of contraceptives, but a deeper cultural (and religious) issue. It often takes a few decades for the number of births per mother to reach a significantly lower level. During the development phase of a country, birth rates and fertility rates decline as well, but at a much slower pace than mortality. Developed countries enjoy declines in both mortality and birth rates, better sanitation and health, improved nutrition, increased use of hospitals, greater accessibility to doctors, and more. The development of a country triggers major changes in birth and mortality patterns, which, in turn, results in dramatic changes in life expectancy, the age structure of the population, and dependency ratios. This approach has already been successfully adopted by some nations (see “Does Privatization Provide a More Equitable Solution” and “The Future of Social Security” in Chapter 18 "Social Security"). The future retirement system will likely take the form of mandatory privatized plans, to be supported by some form of governmental social security system that will take care of special cases that cannot be handled by the private sector. Retirement systems are key to financing the other, more immediately imminent problems of these economies. Popular solutions to the retirement problems are expected to become unsuitable to the populations they serve (as expressed by the rapid erosion of the value of saving plans around the globe at the end of 2008).Īlthough retirement may not seem to be the most pressing of issues in developing economies, it needs to be addressed without delay. The current retirement systems (in the form of nationalized social insurance programs and union pension funds, discussed in Chapter 18 "Social Security" and Chapter 19 "Mortality Risk Management: Individual Life Insurance and Group Life Insurance") are becoming products of the past in urgent need of major revisions. They will also affect the future retirement systems. These waves are responsible for the growing cost of the age-related processes that mainly affect well-being during the retirement period and the need to countermeasure them by early preventive treatment. This section is based on Yehuda Kahane, “Technological Changes, the Reversal of Age Pyramids and the Future of Retirement Systems,” European Papers on the New Welfare, February 2006, no. In this section we focus on the impact of the technological waves described in the Links on demography, the social structure, and our health. Demographic Changes Affecting Life Cycle Risks
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |