The future of global ageing (original) (raw)
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Global Demographic Change - On Longevity
Mednarodno inovativno poslovanje = Journal of Innovative Business and Management, 2019
In this paper the author examines patterns and prospects for the leading causes of death in countries across the globe. An explicit focus is on the diversity and ongoing dynamics of mortality. New factors promising to contribute to a longer and healthier life help to draw a picture of our life in the decades to come and its opportunities for business and society. Based on this the author presents several scenarios for forecasting of life expectancy with different degrees of probability.
Journal of Population Ageing, 2011
Conventional indicators of human lifespan are based on a hypothetical synthesis of the mortality conditions of different cohorts with (as yet) incomplete life histories. There is a considerable ongoing debate about improvements to the traditional methodology under changing mortality rates . Improved measurement of the human lifespan is crucial for estimating prospects of longevity ) and for understanding the implications of population ageing ; Council of the European Union 2009). Here we show that both the centuries-long tradition of conventional lifespan indicators and the more recent criticism of them ignore the true exposures of individuals to prevailing mortality levels. These exposures form a genuine part of a more comprehensive picture of the prevailing mortality conditions. In lowmortality countries, our estimated duration of human life is about 95 years, which exceeds the conventional estimates by 15 years. This difference is crucial for health care, long-term care and pension systems. Our theory implies that mortality dynamics are characterised by considerable inertia. This is used to develop new effective methods of forecasting, leading to a more optimistic outlook for future mortality. Even if there were no further change in mortality conditions, conventional life expectancy at birth will rise to 90 years by 2050, while the probability to survive beyond age 100 will reach 30% in low-mortality countries. Conventional longevity indicators still provide a useful summary of the observed mortality rates which, in turn, are essential for population projections. However, they do not give the full picture of current mortality conditions and mislead about the prospects of human longevity.
PLOS ONE, 2015
Improvements in life expectancy have been considerable over the past hundred years. Forecasters have taken to applying historical trends under an assumption of continuing improvements in life expectancy in the future. A linear mixed effects model was used to estimate the trends in global and regional rates of improvements in life expectancy, child, adult, and senior survival, in 166 countries between 1950 and 2010. Global improvements in life expectancy, including both child and adult survival rates, decelerated significantly over the study period. Overall life expectancy gains were estimated to have declined from 5.9 to 4.0 months per year for a mean deceleration of-0.07 months/year 2 ; annual child survival gains declined from 4.4 to 1.6 deaths averted per 1000 for a mean deceleration of-0.06 deaths/ 1000/year 2 ; adult survival gains were estimated to decline from 4.8 to 3.7 deaths averted per 1000 per year for a mean deceleration of-0.08 deaths/1000/year 2. Senior survival gains however increased from 2.4 to 4.2 deaths averted per 1000 per year for an acceleration of 0.03 deaths/1000/year 2. Regional variation in the four measures was substantial. The rates of global improvements in life expectancy, child survival, and adult survival have declined since 1950 despite an increase in the rate of improvements among seniors. We postulate that low-cost innovation, related to the last half-century progress in health-primarily devoted to children and middle age, is reaping diminishing returns on its investments. Trends are uneven across regions and measures, which may be due in part to the state of epidemiological transition between countries and regions and disparities in the diffusion of innovation, accessible only in high-income countries where life expectancy is already highest.
Both the centuries-long tradition of conventional lifespan indicators and the more recent criticism to them ignore the true exposures of individuals to prevailing mortality levels. These exposures form a genuine part of a more comprehensive picture of the prevailing mortality conditions. In low-mortality countries, our estimated duration of human life exceeds the conventional estimates by 15 years. Our theory implies that mortality dynamics are characterised by a considerable inertia. This is used to develop new methods of forecasting, leading to a more optimistic outlook for future mortality.
Introducing the Journal of Population Ageing
Journal of Population Ageing, 2008
The second half of the 20th century saw the more developed countries of the world experience population ageing to a degree hitherto unseen in demographic history. The first half of the 21 st Century is predicted to see the same transition within the less developed and transitional countries. Globally, by 2050 there will be some 2 billion adults aged over 60, and the total number of older people will outnumber the young. This is historically unprecedented. It makes the 20 th century the last century of youth, the 21 st century the first of population maturity. Most western style countries have aged continuously over the past century, the measure of ageing being an increase in the percentage of those over 60 years, and a decrease in those under 15 years. Europe reached maturity at the turn of the millennium, with more older people than younger. By 2030 half the population of Western Europe will be over 50, 25% over 65, and 15% over 75. By 2030 one quarter of the population of the developed world will be over 65, and by the middle of the century this will have risen to one third. Yet while most interest has focused on the ageing of Europe, it is the Asian/Pacific region that is ageing most rapidly. By 2030 one quarter of the population of Asia will be over 60, and by 2040 Asia will be demographically mature, with more older than younger people. If we move from structural ageing to consider absolute numbers of older people, the dominance of the less developed regions, and in particular Asia, becomes even more apparent. Already two thirds of the world's older population live in less developed regions with the absolute numbers of older people in these regions doubling to reach some 900 million within 25 years. By 2050 two-thirds of the world's elders will live in Asia alone. The numbers of those aged 80 and above will show an even greater increase, rising from 69 million to near 400 million by 2050. Thus by the middle of the 21st Century there will be almost as many over 80s as there were over 65s at the beginning. This is the fastest growing age group in the world with an annual growth rate of 3.8%. Low fertility around the time of the First World War and declining
The coming acceleration of global population ageing
Nature, 2008
The future paths of population ageing result from specific combinations of declining fertility and increasing life expectancies in different parts of the world 1 . Here we measure the speed of population ageing by using conventional measures and new ones that take changes in longevity into account for the world as a whole and for 13 major regions. We report on future levels of indicators of ageing and the speed at which they change. We show how these depend on whether changes in life expectancy are taken into account. We also show that the speed of ageing is likely to increase over the coming decades and to decelerate in most regions by midcentury. All our measures indicate a continuous ageing of the world's population throughout the century.
The slowing pace of life expectancy gains since 1950
BMC Public Health, 2018
Background: New technological breakthroughs in biomedicine should have made it easier for countries to improve life expectancy at birth (LEB). This paper measures the pace of improvement in the decadal gains of LEB, for the last 60-years adjusting for each country's starting point of LEB. Methods: LEB increases over the next 10-years for 139 countries between 1950 and 2009 were regressed on LEB, GDP, total fertility rate, population density, CO2 emissions, and HIV prevalence using country-specific fixed effects and timedummies. Analysis grouped countries into one-of-four strata: LEB < 51, 51 ≤ LEB < 61, 61 ≤ LEB < 71, and LEB ≥ 71. Results: The rate of increase of LEB has fallen consistently since 1950 across all strata. Results hold in unadjusted analysis and in the regression-adjusted analysis. LEB decadal gains fell from 4.80 (IQR: 2.98-6.20) years in the 1950s to 2. 39 (IQR:1.80-2.80) years in the 2000s for the healthiest countries (LEB ≥ 71). For countries with the lowest LEB (LEB < 51), decadal gains fell from 7.38 (IQR:4.83-9.25) years in the 1950s to negative 6.82 (IQR:-12.95-1.05) years in the 2000s. Multivariate analysis controlling for HIV prevalence, GDP, and other covariates shows a negative effect of time on LEB decadal gains among all strata. Conclusions: Contrary to the expectation that advances in health technology and spending would hasten improvements in LEB, we found that the pace-of-growth of LEB has slowed around the world.
Handbook of Global Health, 2020
Population aging became a globally widespread phenomenon during the last decades. Its core underlying causes are extended life expectancy at birth, improved early childhood survival, education, absorption of women into the labor markets, and consequences of sexual revolution leading to decreased female fertility. The scale of this demographic transition is unique in the entire history of mankind including a profound societal change that is now taking its toll on most countries, rich and poor alike. Shrinking of capable labor force coinciding with the expanding share of elderly and retired citizens continues to happen as a longterm trend. Thus, long-term financial sustainability of public social and health insurance funds becomes more and more questionable. Health expenditure growth continues to accelerate worldwide, with increases mostly on demand side. To a large extent, it is attributable to the needs of elderly citizens for home-based medical care. Last year of life phenomenon confirmed that almost entire life span medical consumption of an individual citizen is equal to the last 12 months of costs of treatment of expensive autoimmune, malignant, or vascular diseases. Most national and transnational authorities seem to be forced to consider reform of the current healthcare financing pattern inherited from the demographic growth era. Such exit strategy is necessary to make the financial burden of population aging bearable for modern-day universal health coverage and retirement policies. Ultimately, without bottom-up rethinking of universal health coverage and social support legacies, burden of global population aging might remain virtually unbearable for the most of modern societies.