“The UN expects that the total number of humans on the planet will continue to expand, to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, and peak at 10.4 billion by 2086.”
“we’re facing life in a greyer world”
“Ageing planet: the new demographic timebomb”
“Japan's ageing population poses urgent risk to society, says PM”
Panic in the corridors of power, in the boardrooms and increasing pressure on people to get busy in the bedroom.
An ageing population is seen by many economists as being a difficult thing to deal with as a growing retired population are supported by a dwindling working age one. Some countries, such as the UK, currently have around 3.7 people of working age for every older person and this is expected to fall to 1.9 by 2040. Population projections tend to take as given that the gains in life expectancy that we have seen over the last few decades will continue, as we shall see this is unlikely to be the case.
Point one
“Measures of physical health have worsened from the Baby Boomer generation through Gen X (born 1965-80) and Gen Y (born 1981-99)” American Journal of Epidemiology. doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab076.
“Millennials are seeing their health decline faster than the previous (so called golden cohort) generation as they age. This extends to both physical health conditions, such as hypertension and high cholesterol, and behavioral health conditions, such as major depression and hyperactivity. Without intervention, millennials could feasibly see mortality rates climb up by more than 40% compared to Gen-Xers at the same age.” THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF MILLENNIAL HEALTH Published Nov. 6, 2019
Polluting the air, soil and water has consequences, so too does using toxic synthetic chemicals on food crops. Ultra transformed ‘food’ is toxic. The environments in which a large proportion of the population live are stressful, due to high density populations, light and noise pollution, angular building geometry etc. This stress plays a leading role in causing a decline in mental health and this decline is leading to increasing rates of suicide in younger generations.
This means that the older cohorts in the population will, as is normal, make increasing demands on the various national health systems. It also means, and this is important, the younger cohorts will be placing higher than projected demands on the same systems. Health care costs are increasing across all the generations, age related problems for the earlier generations and poisoning/pollution/stress related problems in the younger ones.
“What’s difficult to explain is not that those born in the golden cohort have done significantly better than their older cohort – we might expect this to be the case thanks to improvements in healthcare, prosperity, and medical advances. What is difficult to explain is that those in the golden cohort show consistently higher improvements than those born after.” source
Point two
A less healthy working age population means slower economic growth. So….. we have a population bulge going through their retirement or approaching it and due to lower birth rates lower recruitement into the working population. On top of this, said working population are in worse health than the Silent and Boomer cohorts and therefore don’t produce as much. The X,Y,Z cohorts take more days off sick when compared to the earlier generations.
Oh dear.
As creaking governments turn, once again, to a simplistic and one size fits all solution we see them, yet again, ignoring the data or at best cherry picking it. According to them and a bunch of neo-liberal economists THE SOLUTION to the economic demographic ‘timebomb’ is to raise the retirement age. In France from 62 to 64 and in the UK from 66 to 68. Keeping people in work for longer and away from their retirement money.
Golden sunsets and golden dawns
The Silent generation grew up during very troubled periods, the Great wars, the Great Depression etc. That said there were some advantages, for example studies have shown that wartime rationing in the UK actually improved the health of the nation. Children growing up at that time had a better diet than the generation X,Y,Z children. This laid some solid health foundations. Many of the Silent generation and early Boomers are also the one’s who are benefitting the most from a good retirement package, for this ‘golden cohort’ there is a golden sunset.
The Millenials, Generation Z would seem to have had and to be having a golden dawn. An abundance of cheap food, cheap consumer goods, social networks and so forth. Yet all the studies are showing that the gold is fools gold, bright and shiny but catastrophic in terms of health and wellbeing. A future golden sunset is fading away before their eyes.
Economics
“ We estimate that a 10% increase in the fraction of the population ages 60+ decreases GDP per capita by 5.7%” Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Here, as too often, we find ‘reputed’ economists who continue to base their arguments on an utterly flawed metric GDP. Time and time again it has been successfully argued that this measure is not a measure at all and should not be used.
Despite the fact that over 200 million workdays are lost due to mental health conditions each year ($16.8 billion in employee productivity),
"More U.S. adolescents and young adults in the late 2010s, versus the mid-2000s, experienced serious psychological distress, major depression or suicidal thoughts, and more attempted suicide,"
A recent study by Mind Share Partners, Qualtrics and SAP reveals that half of millennials and 75% of Gen Zers have left a job for mental health reasons.
The younge generations are already taking more days off sick and this has quite far reaching consequences for an economy. Projections indicate that this is a problem that will get bigger.
As usual a wider analysis shows that the so-called demographic timebomb is much more complex situation than is presented by governments and a large number of economists. This means that for the most part too many people are spending too much time promoting ‘solutions’ that will probably make the situation worse.
Those people who are calling for much wider and deeper socio-economic changes are still ignored. The idea that we must stop poisoning the Earth and people is too radical for most decision makers who prefer the ostrich approach. Those who stand up and argue that our current economic systems are failing the world are told to face up to some mythical ‘réal-politik’ and that people are being fed and housed thanks to the systems in place. This despite the reality that this is simply not the case, in december 2022 nearly 25% of British adults estimated themselves to be in food insecurity. Yet there is, on any given day, enough food in that country to feed it’s population.
During the national covid lockdowns a large number of people realised that they were living to work and not working to live. These people are slowly but steadily changing their lives to have a better balance. I have often said that many people should have business cards that have two sides, the 1st is their details concerning what they do professionally and the other side details what they love doing. It’s rare that the two sides show the same thing. This is changing as people leave their jobs to start buildng a new life based on different values to the one’s we are indoctrinted with. It’s a quiet revolution, un-mediatised, widely ignored by policy makers but very real for the many people taking the leap.
Thi isn’t a sort of ‘back to the land, hippy movement’ as was seen in the 1960’s. This paradigm shift is being led by professional people who are adapting their skill sets to a build something different. I met with a group of people recently who had worked in different industries and who had had enough and desired change. With the help of the local authority they created a mini housing estate and the new homes are small yet big enough. They are built with sustainable resources (wood in the main) they consume very little electricity which comes from a few solar panels and they use little energy to maintain a livable indoors temperature. This group are using their ‘business’ skill set to help other people set up similar housing estates in different parts of the country. They offer legal advice and physical help when needed. They are helping people move away from the economic BDSM of the current system which involves working and working to pay for a house, a car and to pay the bills. An increasingly vicious circle that is damaging our health and well-being and destroying the natural systemms on which we depend.