tailieunhanh - Population Aging: Facts, Challenges, and Responses

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (2002, .) has reported that Americans 65 and older rarely perform the following Internet-based activities: visiting chat rooms, playing games, visiting job sites, listening to music, trading stocks, or participating in listservs. Wicks (2004) found that reading was one of the most popular past-times of the elderly interviewed in his study. The majority of them used the library to rent books, audio, videos and participate in library programs. If the elderly comprise a large part of the library-going population, then the library could be the best source for medical information and information literacy. | Program on the Global Demography of aging Working Paper Series Population Aging Facts Challenges and Responses David E. Bloom Axel Boersch-Supan Patrick McGee and Atsushi Seike May 2011 PGDA Working Paper No. 71 http pgda The views expressed in this paper are those of the author s and not necessarily those of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health. The Program on the Global Demography of Aging receives funding from the National Institute on Aging Grant No. 1 P30 AG024409-06. Population Aging Facts Challenges and Responses David E. Bloom Axel Boersch-Supan Patrick McGee and Atsushi Seike Introduction The world s population is growing older leading us into uncharted demographic waters. There will be higher absolute numbers of elderly people a larger share of elderly longer healthy life expectancies and relatively fewer numbers of working-age people. There are alarmist views - both popular and serious - in circulation regarding what these changes might mean for business and economic performance. But the effects of population aging are not straightforward to predict. Population aging does raise some formidable and fundamentally new challenges but they are not insurmountable. These changes also bring some new opportunities because people have longer healthier lives resulting in extended working years and different capacities and needs. The key is adaptation on all levels individual organizational and societal. This article explores some potentially useful responses from government and business to the challenges posed by aging. Trends and patterns in population aging1 Population aging is taking place in every country in the world. There are three factors underlying this trend Increased longevity In most parts of the world people are living significantly longer lives than in previous decades. For the world as a whole life expectancy increased by two decades since 1950 from 48 years in 1950-55 to 68 years in 2005-10 . During the current .