topic:

challanges, issues and trends in aging population in south asian countries

challanges:
All across Asia, the number of people age 65 and above is expected to grow dramatically
over the next 50 years. For the region as a whole, the population in this age group will
increase by 314 percent from 207 million in 2000 to 857 million in 2050 . Facing an
unprecedented pace of population aging, Asian governments must tackle important policy
challenges. How best can the needs of the elderly be met? Will current approaches to
support the elderly place an undue burden on the younger generation? And are there
dangers that programs for the elderly will undermine economic growth? These issues are
also being confronted in the West where population aging is more advanced. But the
process of population aging is occurring much more rapidly in Asia than it did in Western
countries, and it will occur in some Asian countries at a much earlier stage of economic
development. In 2000, the average age in Asia was 29 years. An estimated 6 percent of
the regions total population were age 65 and older, 30 percent were under age 15, and 64
percent were in the working-age group of 15 to 64 years (United Nations 2001). the
proportions in these age groups for Asias subregions and countries. United Nations
medium projections estimate that the proportion in the working-age group will be the
same in 2050, at 64 percent, but there will be a dramatic shift in the proportion of
children and the elderly. The proportion under age 15 will drop to 19 percent, and the
proportion 65 and older will rise to 18 percent. The average age in Asia will be 40 years.
in general, the countries of East Asia are furthest along in the population aging process,
followed by Southeast Asia. The exceptions are Singapore in Southeast Asia and Sri
Lanka in South Asia, where relatively large proportions of the population are elderly, and
Mongolia in East Asia, where the proportion elderly is still small. Japan has the oldest
population in Asia, with 17 percent age 65 and older, and the most rapidly aging
population in the world. The United Nations medium scenario anticipates that 29 percent
of Japanese will be 65 or older by 2025 and 36 percent will be 65 or older by 2050.
Bangladesh, by contrast, has the youngest population of any major country in the region,

with 3 percent 65 or older in 2000. But even Bangladesh and Asias other young
populations will experience rapid population aging during the coming decades.
Bangladeshs 65-and-older population is projected to rise to 5 percent in 2025 and 11
percent in 2050.
trends of asia,s elderly:

More will be in the oldest age groups.

Most will be women.

Fewer will be widowed.

They will have fewer adult children.

They will retire earlier.

More will be in the oldest age groups.

Today, Asias elderly are concentrated primarily in the younger segments of the old-age
population group. Over time, however, the greatest increases in population will occur in
the oldest age groups. Of all Asians age 55 and older, roughly one-half are now between
the ages of 55 and 64, about one-third are between 65 and 74, and not quite onesixth are
75 and above. These proportions will remain fairly stable over the next 25 years, but over
the following 25 year period the proportion in the oldest age group (75 and above) is
expected to increase substantially from 15 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2025 and then
up to 27 percent in 2050.
Most will be women.
In most countries of Asia, as in the rest of the world, older women outnumber older men,
particularly in the oldest age groups. Today, among the population age 55 and above,
there are about 90 men in Asia for every 100 women. Among those age 75 and above,
there are only about 70 men for every 100 women. This is a persistent feature of Asias
population that is not expected to change much over the next 50 years.

Fewer will be widowed.

Traditionally, nearly everyone in Asia has married, and very few have divorced. Thus,
most of the elderly are living with a spouse or are widowed. As life expectancies rise, the
proportion of the elderly who are widowed at any given age will decline sharply. Women
will be especially affected because they are much more likely than men to be widowed.
Today, or example, just over one-half (52 percent) of all South Korean women age 65 to
69 are widows. This proportion is expected to drop to 17 percent in 2050. In Thailand, 32
percent of women in this age group are widowed today, also projected to drop to 17
percent in 2050. Among men age 65 to 69, only 8 percent are widowers in South Korea
and only 10 percent in Thailand. Because the proportions of men widowed are already
low, the decline will be more modest for men than for women.
They will have fewer adult children.
In many Asian countries, the elderly have more surviving adult children today than at any
time in history, a consequence of previous declines in infant and child mortality. In 1990,
Korean women in their sixties, for example, had 4.4 surviving children on average. With
the decline in childbearing, however, elderly parents will be increasingly dependent on
only one or two adult children. Women in Japan who turned 65 between 1995 and 2000
were the first Japanese women in the 20th century to have an average of only two
surviving children (Feeney and Mason 2001). Given low levels of childbearing in China
(including Hong Kong), Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, many
elderly women in the future will have even fewer than two surviving children. The
illness, death, or estrangement of even a single adult child will threaten the viability of
the traditional family support system for the elderly.
They will retire earlier.
With economic development, workers everywhere in the world tend to retire at younger
ages. In part, this reflects the greater wealth of older workers. But it also reflects larger
numbers who are subject to mandatory retirement ages or retirement plans that penalize
those who continue to work. Although older adults are much more likely to work in Asia
than in Europe or the United States, the proportion of all Asian elderly in the labor force

has already declined and is projected to decline further from 38 percent of the population
65 and above in 1950 to 25 percent in 2000 and 22 percent in 2010. The estimated
median retirement age for men dropped from 67 in 1960 to 63 in 2000. Labor-force
participation varies widely among specific subregions and countries. Forty-one percent of
Japanese men age 55 and above were still working in 2000, projected to drop to 29
percent in 2050.
issues faced by aged people in south asian countries:
The South Asian people share many socio-economic and political problems, such as
poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, unequal treatment of women, violence against women,
pollution, exploitation of child labor, and religious fundamentalism. Human rights
organizations in South Asia have recently taken steps to cooperate in addressing their
common problems.
Almost all South Asian countries have laws that do not respect essential notions of due
process, often resulting in arbitrary arrests, assault, and killing of innocent people by
government officials. For instance, freedom of movement between countries is highly
restricted. India and Pakistan often deny visas to their citizens, and even when granted,
these governments require travelers to report daily to police stations in the town they are
visiting. More than two million Nepalese women are working as prostitutes in Indian
brothels, where approximately 20% are girls below 16 years of age. Women and children
are bought and sold into prostitution. The Nepalese- speaking people of Bhutan are
suffering under the monarchy's state policy of ethnic cleansing, whereby they are
compelled to leave Bhutan and take shelter in countries such as India and Nepal. To date,
more than 90,000 Bhutanese refugees have fled to Nepal. The Sinhalese-controlled
government of Sri Lanka is struggling to control a separatist movement, led by the Tamil
minority, and disappearances, bombing in public areas, and random death are common.
The Bangladeshi government continues to use force to suppress the armed resistance of
indigenous people who are seeking to become politically independent, and the crops and
houses of innocent people are being destroyed in the process. In light of these human
rights problems, South Asia can ill afford to remain the only region in the world where
there is no regional instrument to govern human rights.

"An October 2011 article on Dawn.com notes: South Asia will experience a dramatic
increase in its elderly population by nearly nine times between 2010 and 2025 when life
expectancy will increase to 75 years for men and 82 years for women.
While this is a problem for countries all over the world, South Asia faces some unique
issues. Governments in the region don't devote many resources to the elderly:
"India and Bangladesh... spend less than 0 .5% of their GDPs on social pensions that
benefit less than 20% of people over the age of 60... In a study by HelpAge International,
a not-for-profit working to protect the rights of the elderly and provide helpful
interventions, it was found that approximately 76% of elderly Bangladeshis are excluded
from government support and social protection"
Pakistan in particular has no social safety net, "There is no retirement age or benefits for
citizens, regardless of age . This void of social safety nets for the elderly can be attributed
to the fact that until the last 30 years, the lifespan for an average Pakistani was less than
60 years . "
And Intellecap quotes a researcher who says that the programs that do exist are "flawed,
and there is nepotism, inefficiency and a lack of accountability."
And the tradition of families caring for elders is not picking up this slack:
"myriad economic opportunities exist in urban areas, and significant rural-to-urban
migration supports that fact . But what this also means is that the shape of the
multigenerational family is shifting towards a more nuclear structure: the latest statistics
show that less than 40% of families in India are joint or multigenerational . Where
previous generations could fully rely on living with their children or grandchildren to
look after them in their old age, that is not necessarily the norm today."
conclusion:
"governments and civil organizations will need to turn to relatively untraditional,
unfamiliar models, such as homes and skills training initiatives for the elderly, to make
progress and alleviate the burden of poverty on this demographic now and in the future "

"old age homes or retirement communities

are quite limited in number if such

facilities exist, they cater to the middle-classes and are anyway out of reach for the poor...
There is a clear intervention opportunity by governments or for public-private
partnerships here: the creation and support of more affordable or subsidized elderlycentric facilities would be the start to changing social consciousness about how the
elderly can and should live."
South Asian countries need to document and face the challenges posed by the
increasingly elderly populations. Timely collection and release of high-quality data
should be prioritized to facilitate the planning process. Social security schemes need to be
expanded to cover vulnerable segments of the population. Familial support systems also
should be strengthened by various means. Private and nonprofit sector efforts must be
developed to supplement those of the over-burdened public sector. At the same time
elements of Asian culture that respect elders and view old age as a time of wisdom should
not be lost. That is, making adequate provision for seniors should not be accompanied by
approaches or assumptions that view old age as a looming problem or the proportion of
elders in society as a burden. A social construction of the aging process as inherently
problematic serves to legitimize a transfer of responsibility for elders from the state to
individual older persons (Estes et al.). For each country or subgroup in South Asia, an
appropriate balance needs to be developed between individual and public provision for
the growing elderly population.
biblogrophy:
GUPTA, A. Osteoporosis in India: the Nutritional Hypothesis. National Medicine
Journal of India 9, no. 6 (1996): 268274.
International Labour Office. World Labour Report 2000. Geneva: United Nations, 2000.
IRUDAYA RAJAN, S.; MISHRA, U. S.; and SARMA, P. S. Living Arrangements
among the Indian Elderly. In Hong Kong Journal of Gerontology 9, no. 2 (1995): 20
28.
MURRAY, C. J. L., and LOPEZ, A. D. Global Health Statistics: A Compendium of

Incidence, Prevalence, and Mortality Estimates for over 200 Conditions. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
RAMA RAO, S., and TOWNSEND, J. Health Needs of Elderly Women: An Emerging
Issue. In Gender, Population and Development. Edited by Maithreyi Krishnaraj, Ratna
M. Sudarshan, and Abusaleh Shariff. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
United Nations. Demographic Yearbook Special Issue: Population Ageing and the
Situation of Elderly Persons. New York: United Nations, 1991. Special Topic Table 4.
Page 394.