Introduction

We are getting older.

This commonplace is both self-evident - individually we are always that little bit older, each and every day - and surprising - Niger is getting older, Mali is getting older, Somalia is getting older. This is surprising since these are, effectively, among the youngest societies on earth (Niger 15.8 Mali median age 16.35, Somalia median age 17.59). Everyone is aware that Japan is getting older, everyone is aware that Germany is getting older (these are currently the two oldest societies on the planet), but Niger, Mali and Somalia!


In fact, apart from 18 'demographic outliers' as identified in the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report, each and every country on the planet is getting older. Nor is this societal 'ageing' a recent phenomenon, it starts from virually the outset of what has become known as the demographic transition - something which began in many European societies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The transition begins with a sudden and sustained drop in mortality, the society becomes 'suddenly young' and after this it is continuous ageing all the way.

So if this work is about ageing, its starting point is that this ageing is not a new or recent phenomenon (the 'discovery of ageing' is of course more recent, but that is another story). The end point? Well there is no end point, as life expectancy continues to push ever onwards and upwards we will all be living longer, and to date there does not seem to be any special biological limit to this process. That is the good news.

The bad news comes with the how. Following the sharp mortality decline which characterises the onset of the demographic transition ageing commences, but historically it has done so at a relatively slow rate. The difficult part of the ageing process as it affects us today is that now proceeding more rapidly, with the evidence suggesting that those societies which began the transition later are ageing even more rapidly. Countries like China and Brazil have experienced sharp declines in their birth rates accompanied by rapid increases in life expectancy. This means that the median age at historically unprecedented rates, and that these societies run the risk of becoming 'old' before they become 'rich'.

The ageing process is also associated in the contemporary world with sizeable changes in the age structure of the population, changes, which given our existing customary boundaries between the ages of work and retirement, are likely to produce a significant increase in elderly dependency ratios across all the OECD countries.

There are however solutions available to address the problems which this rapid ageing will produce. In part it will be the objective of this book to describe and explain the changes which are taking place around us, and in part the aim will be to explain and justify the changes we need to make if contemporary 'ageing' is to become not a threat but a boon and a challenge.

The provisional structure of the book is as follows:

Chap I Nasty Brutish and Short?
Chap II The Second Stage?
Chap III The Discovery of Age Structure
Chap IV The Mysteries of Growth
Chap V The Life Cycle
Chap VI Asymetric Shocks
Chap VI Global Imbalances
Chap VII Remedying the Global Imbalances