The World Turns Grey
Phillip J. Longman
U.S. News and World Report
This article is rife with statistics that illustrate the major population problems that the world faces. Some of the statistics presented in the article are:
- In the year 2000, for the first time, people over 60 will outnumber kids 14 or younger in industrial countries.
- By the year 2050, people over 60 will comprise 32.5% of the population in industrialized countries while kids 14 and under will makeup only 15.3%.
- By 2050, even in developing countries, people over 60 will outnumber kids 20.6% to 20.3%.
- Asia is aging rapidly. Japan, for example, will suffer a 25 percent decline over the next decade in the number of workers under 30.
- Paying for the health care costs of the elderly, according to official projections, would require increasing the total tax burden on workers by an equivalent of 25 to 40 percent. The alternative is to cut benefits.
- As the trends become more visible, middle-age people will save a higher percentage of their income and this will have a negative impact on consumer demand for non- essential goods.
- Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria have birth rates of 1.2 children per family or less. (It takes 2.1 children per family to replace the population.)
- Brazil is currently undergoing a financial meltdown so perilous it periodically scorches Wall Street. Brazil has seen a dramatic decline in its fertility rate over the last generation. In 1960, a Brazilian woman on average had more than six children over her lifetime; today, her counterpart has just 2.3 children. As a result, in a land once known for its celebration of dental-floss bikinis and youthful carnival exuberance, pension debt has become the public’s central preoccupation. The problem is so critical that a recent report by the Ministry of Health concludes that aging of the population is now the nation’s most important challenge and that, if the government doesn’t take urgent action, we may be faced in the coming years with the problem of street elders.