More than one billion over-60s by 2025 — U.N.

Press, 11 August 1982, Page 19

More than one billion over-60s by 2025 — U.N.

PA Wellington More than one billion people will be aged over 60 by the year 2025, outnumbering the young in many countries for the first time, according to a United Nations report. The baby boom had finished and the over-60s age group was increasing ahead of all others, said the report, made public at the opening of the United Nations World Assembly on Ageing in Vienna. Delegates from 120 countries will study how to cope with the economic impact of population ageing, and how a proportionately shrinking workforce can support grow-

ing numbers of old people. Only in the last few months have 'United Nations demographic experts discovered the extent of the ageing population explosion, predicted for early next century. It is the first time that worldwide projections of ageing have been taken beyond the year 2000. “Unlike many computer predictions, these are based on known facts: the over-60s of 2025 are alive today — aged 17 and over — in huge numbers,” said a pre-confer-ence report. As birth rates drop so the proportion of over-liOs will increase. It will be more than 25 per cent in industrialised countries such as

Japan, France, and Britain. “But the sharpest effects of population ageing will be felt in developing countries. Today their populations are strikingly young, with up to 50 per cent aged less than 25,” it said. “By 2025, when nearly three-quarters of over 60s will live in the Third World, countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria will see their over-60s increase by up to 15 times since 1950.” The report says that two decades of development efforts have successfully lowered fertility and mortality. As fertility drops and the children of the “baby boom” live longer, the proportion of

old people rises. Industrialised countries, which were the first to fix retirement ages and arrange pension schemes, are already feeling the pinch. On the other hand, Third World countries are unable to introduce social security schemes on a broad scale. “We must search for alternatives that stress the productive involvement of the aged, not just their pro- . tection and care. The assembly secretariat wants to see ageing put firmly on the political agenda of all countries to ensure that the ‘gift of ageing’ is used productively,” it said.