People living longer sounds good - But not for capitalism
The world's 65-and-older population will triple by mid-century to 1 in 6 people, leaving governments struggling to support the elderly.
"The 2020s for most of the developed world will be an era of fiscal crisis, with a real long-term stagnation in economic growth and ugly political battles over old-age benefits cuts," said Richard Jackson, director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies . "In emerging countries like China, they will face the real prospect of a humanitarian aging crisis," he said.
In the UK the age at which people start to receive the state pension will be getting later in the coming decades. The state pension age for men and women will rise to 66 in 2024, to 67 in 2034 and 68 in 2044. Each rise will be phased-in over two years.
The author of an influential report into the future of pensions Lord Turner told the BBC , "If I was redoing my report I would be...arguing for an even faster increase in the state pension age...It is not taking people's retirement away from them" - people will just not be paid a state pension until they reached the new "pension age" - a fine distinction , indeed .
A report for the French Institute for Demographic Studies warns of a population time bomb for developing nations as the ratio of elderly people rises faster than in the industrialised world and the prospect of vast numbers of their elderly people living in poverty.
An indicator of the speed of this "population ageing" is the time it takes for the proportion of people over a retirement age of 65 to double - from 7% of the overall population to 14%. In France this process took more than a century.In China, is projected to take less than a quarter of that time, some 25 years. In Vietnam and Syria, the French researchers say, "population ageing" is set to rise even faster than it is now in China. The proportion of elderly in these two states is set to double over a mere 17-year period, beginning in a few years' time.
Economic advances that increase levels of education and global mass communications are making people change their habits far more quickly than they did in the old industrialised nations. Education levels are rising faster in much of Asia now, for example, than they did in Victorian England.
If these French researchers are right, it means the current pension crunch in rich countries may look relatively insignificant compared with what is coming in the future for the rest of the world.
2 comments:
I think this is a very important article, which should be on the front of newspapers rather than lost somewhere in Blogger.
The fact that people in Britain alone are aging is a strong reminder that there is more to life than pleasing ourselves and making money. The main reason I am a socialist is because I am fed up with the selfishness and greed of capitalists and liberals running my country. No matter who we are and what our status, we have a duty to look after our elderly relatives. Sadly, I see many old people being dumped in lonely care homes so that their offspring can live the good life and earn loadzamoney.
Malcolm Sutherland, Ayrshire
The number of people over 65 filing for bankruptcy has almost tripled over the past five years
more people were entering retirement with unpaid debts and also blamed rising food and energy prices.
It said pensioners tended to spend a higher proportion of their income on essentials such as food and energy than the wider population.
"Pensioners... find themselves unable to meet repayments when their incomes shrink back on retirement"
The property boom saw many people remortgaging their houses to withdraw cash, which has resulted in a growing number of pensioners being left with substantial mortgages
Pensioners may have outstanding credit card debts which were taken on during the credit boom, so they find themselves unable to meet repayments when their incomes shrink back on retirement
"The second thing is, since towards the end of 2008 we've seen interest rates go off a cliff and they're staying down. And so the income from savings that pensioners often rely on just aren't there any more," he added
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