The shape of things to come: global aging in the twenty-first century.

"The world stands on the threshold of a social transformation--even a revolution--with few parallels in humanity's past.... Perhaps two-thirds of all people who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today."

Thirty years ago, uncontrollable population growth seemed to be a major threat to the world's long-term future. Paul Ehrlich's worldwide best seller, The Population Bomb, predicted a teeming and youthful humanity falling off the edge of all seven continents. More recently, in a little-noticed shift of expert opinion, demographers have begun to project a dramatic deceleration in global population growth and an equally dramatic aging of societies worldwide. In 1970, the future was crowded with babies. Today, it is crowded with elders.

Most young people have difficulty contemplating their own old age or preparing for the discomfort and dependency that often accompany it. Likewise, the world today finds it hard to confront its collective aging, much less the difficult political and economic choices that aging societies will have to make. Yet we can no longer afford denial. The accumulating evidence is now overwhelming: The world stands on the threshold of a social transformation---even a revolution--with few parallels in humanity's past. Indeed, this revolution has already begun. Perhaps two-thirds of all people who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. It's time we take an unflinching look at the shape of things to come.

For nearly all of history, the elderly (people age 65 and over) never amounted to more than 2 or 3 percent of the population. Roughly 150 years ago, that share started to rise. Today, in the developed world, (1) it amounts to 15 percent. By the year 2030, the UN projects that it will be nearing 25 percent and may be hitting 30 percent in Japan and some of the fast-aging countries of continental Europe. (2)

As a whole, the developing world will remain much younger for the foreseeable future. Yet it too is aging. Several major countries in East Asia--including China, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea--are projected to reach developed-world levels of old-age dependency by the middle of this century.

Global aging will pose daunting choices to voters and political leaders and place difficult burdens on workers and employers.

There is th...

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