City view of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Asia-Pacific region is urbanizing rapidly. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, Sep 23 2016 (IPS)

While the world’s population of 7.4 billion is growing at 1.1 percent per year – about half the peak level of the late 1960s – enormous differences in demographic growth among countries are increasingly evident and of mounting concern to countries and the international community.

Few of the decliners are prepared to accept large-scale immigration, particularly from doubler countries, to address labor force shortages and population aging concerns.
At one extreme are the doublers: 29 countries whose populations are expected to at least double by the middle of the 21st century. At the other extreme in striking contrast are the decliners: 38 countries whose populations are expected to be smaller by the middle of the 21st century.

The doublers are all located in sub-Saharan Africa except for Iraq and the State of Palestine. The largest countries among the doublers are Nigeria (187 million), followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (80 million) and Tanzania (55 million).

Today the doublers together account for 10 percent of the world’s population. By 2050, however, due to the doublers’ rapid rates of demographic growth that proportion is expected to increase to 18 percent of the world’s projected population of nearly 10 billion people.

Among the doublers the country with the most rapid increase is Niger, whose population of 21 million is expected to double by the year 2034 and to experience a 250 percent increase by mid-century, more than tripling its population to 72 million. Other countries with substantial increases of 150 percent or more are Zambia, Angola, Uganda and Mali (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations Population Division

The largest doubler population, Nigeria, is expected to increase by 112 percent, reaching just under 400 million by 2050 and thereby displacing the United States as the world’s third largest country after India and China. Another sizeable population increase is the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose population of 80 million is projected to increase by 145 percent, or an additional 116 million people, bringing its total midcentury population to nearly 200 million.

While not a single country’s population at the close of the 20th century was smaller than in 1950, this demographic trend is not expected to continue over the next several decades. The decliners, a group of 38 countries both developed and developing, are expected to experience population decline by the middle of the 21st century. Together the decliner’s proportion of the world’s population is projected to fall from close to 30 percent today to nearly 20 percent by the year 2050.

The top ten countries with the projected population declines of no less than 15 percent are all located in Eastern Europe (Figure 2). The country with the most rapid decline among the decliners is Bulgaria (27 percent), followed by Romania (22 percent), Ukraine (21 percent) and Moldova (20 percent).

Source: United Nations Population Division

The largest decliner population, China, is expected to decrease by more than 2 percent by 2050, with the Chinese population peaking in less than a decade. Other large populations projected to experience demographic declines by midcentury are Japan (15 percent), Russia (10 percent), Germany (8 percent) and Italy (5 percent). Moreover, some of the decliners have already experienced population decline for a number of years in the recent past, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.

The population projections for the decliners assume some immigration in the future. For some decliner countries, such as Italy, Japan, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Russia, immigration lessens the expected declines in their future populations. For example, while Italy’s population with assumed immigration is projected to decline by 5 percent by mid-century, without immigration Italy’s projected population would fall to 13 percent.

Noteworthy differences exist in both mortality and migration levels between doublers and decliners. Doubler countries have markedly higher mortality rates than decliners. In addition, doublers are generally migrant-sending countries, while many of the decliners are migrant-receiving countries.

The sizeable differences in rates of future population growth, however, are primarily due to the level of fertility. The median fertility rate among the 29 doubler countries is 5.3 births per woman, ranging from a low of 4.4 in Kenya to a high of 7.6 in Niger. In contrast, fertility levels among the 38 decliner countries all fall below the replacement level of about two children, with the median fertility rate being 1.5 births per woman. Countries that are approximately a half child below the replacement level include China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia and Spain.

The comparatively high and low population growth rates pose formidable, but differing challenges for doubler and decliner countries. Doublers face serious development challenges in meeting the basic needs of their rapidly growing and very young populations. The median ages of the doubler countries are all below 20 years, with the youngest being Niger (15 years), Uganda (16), Chad (16), Angola (16), Mali (16) and Somali (16).

Many doubler countries, such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger and Uganda, are now facing food shortages. Providing sufficient foods for their rapidly growing populations is expected to be considerably more difficult in the years ahead.

Other key areas that pose serious challenges are housing, education, health care, employment, personal security and governance, especially as nearly half of the doubler countries are among high alert failing or fragile states. Given the onerous living conditions for most of the populations in doubler countries, growing numbers of young adults are turning to both legal and illegal migration to wealthier developed countries, many of which are also decliner countries.

Among their attempts to address their high rates of population growth, doubler governments have established programs for reproductive health services to assist families to have the number of children they desire, which is generally fewer than current levels. With widespread education, especially for girls, and improved employment opportunities, the doubler governments are aiming to reduce their high fertility levels and accelerate their demographic transitions to low death and birth rates.

While decliners have by and large met the basic needs of their populations, they are confronting increasingly the pervasive consequences of population decline and aging. Contractions in the size of their labor forces coupled with increases in the proportion elderly are exerting stresses and strains on the economies and budgets of decliner countries.

Many of the decliners have already passed through the historic reversal, or the demographic point where the number of elderly aged 65 and older exceeds the number of children below age 15 years. The median ages for half of the decliners are above 40 years, with the oldest being Japan, Germany and Italy at 46 years.

With the proportion of elderly increasing and more of them living longer, often many years beyond retirement, governments of the decliner countries are particularly concerned about escalating costs for social security, pensions, health and care giving. Options to address those fiscal issues include raising official retirement ages, increasing taxes, redirecting government revenues and reducing benefits.

Few of the decliners are prepared to accept large-scale immigration, particularly from doubler countries, to address labor force shortages and population aging concerns. As is being increasingly reported, some decliners are erecting barriers, fences and walls to deter unauthorized immigration, while others remain resolutely averse to a sizeable foreign population taking hold within their borders.

Many decliner countries, including China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Spain, are attempting to alter their projected demographic futures by raising their low fertility levels in hopes of mitigating population decline and perhaps even achieving near population stabilization. Moving to replacement level fertility by encouraging women to have additional children, however, has proved to be difficult and generally not successful.

It is often said that opposites attract. Perhaps in romance, friendships and the movies, people are attracted to those who are viewed different from them. That appears not to be the case for doubler and decliner countries, at least for the present. However, as has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout world demographic history, rapidly growing populations are not easily confined to within borders, eventually traversing deserts, mountains, rivers and seas and spreading out across continents.

Excerpt:

Women now comprise the majority of the poor and old in Japan, the world’s third largest economy and fastest-aging society. Credit: S. H. isado/CC BY-ND 2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

Fifty-four-year-old Marlyn Maeda, an unmarried freelance writer living in Tokyo who never held a permanent job, is now watching her dream of aging independently go up in smoke.

“I work four jobs and barely survive,” said the writer, who disclosed only her penname to IPS. Her monthly income after writing articles, working at a call centre, selling cosmetics five days a week and working one night at a bar hovers at close to 1,600 dollars.

Maeda belongs to the burgeoning ranks of the poor in Japan, a country that saw its poverty rate pass the 16-percent mark in 2013 as a result of more than two decades of sluggish growth that has led to lower salaries and the cutting of permanent jobs among this population of 127.3 million people.

She also represents an alarming trend: rising poverty among women, who now comprise the majority of the poor and old in Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and fastest-aging society.

“We have women who are desperate. Because they do not hold secure jobs, they endure searing problems such as domestic violence or workplace harassment." -- Akiko Suzuki, of the non-profit ‘Inclusive Net’
Indeed, Maeda points out her pay is now a low 50 dollars per article, down from the heady era of the 80s and 90s when she earned at least three times that rate.

Japan defines the poverty threshold as those earning less than 10,000 dollars per year. The elderly and part-timers fall into this category, and Maeda’s hard-earned income, which places her slightly above the official poverty line, nonetheless keeps her on her toes, barely able to cover her most basic needs.

“When the call centre cut my working days to three a week in June, and payment for freelancers [dropped], I became really worried about my future. If I fall sick and cannot work, I will just have to live on the streets,” Maeda asserted.

After paying her rent, taxes and health insurance, she admits to being so hard-pressed that she sometimes borrows from her aging parents in order to survive.

Maeda’s story, which echoes the experience of so many women in Japan today, flies in the face of government efforts to empower women and improve their economic participation.

In fact, a sweeping package of reforms introduced earlier this year by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was met with skepticism from gender experts and advocates, who are disheartened by the myriad social and economic barriers facing women.

Dubbed ‘Womenomics’ in line with Abe’s economic reform policies – based on anti-deflation and GDP-growth measures that earned the label ‘Abenomics’ in early 2013 – the move calls for several changes that will pave the way for Japanese women, long discriminated in the work place, to gain new terms including equal salaries as their male counterparts, longer periods of childcare leave and promotions.

Given the fact that 60 percent of employed women leave their jobs when starting a family, Abe has promised to tackle key barriers, including increasing the number of daycare slots for children by 20,000, and upping the number of after-school programmes by 300,000 by 2020.

Another target is to increase women’s share of leadership positions to 30 percent by that same year.

Writing about the scheme in the Wall Street Journal last September, Abe claimed the government growth plan could spur a two-percent increase in productivity over the middle to long term, which in turn could lead to an average two-percent increase in inflation-adjusted GDP over a 10-year period.

“We have set the goal of boosting women’s workforce participation from the current 68 percent to 73 percent by the year 2020,” Abe wrote, adding, “Japanese women earn, on average, 30.2 percent less than men (compared with 20.1 percent in the U.S. and just 0.2 percent in the Philippines). We must bridge this equality gap.”

But for experts like Hiroko Inokuma, a gender researcher focusing on the challenges facing working mothers, this is a “tall order”, especially in the light of “growing job insecurity, which is already leading to dismal poverty figures among women.”

Indeed, the numbers paint a grim picture: one in three women between the ages of 20 and 64 years of age and living alone are living in poverty, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR), a leading Tokyo-based think tank.

Among married women, the poverty figure is 11 percent and counts mostly older women whose husbands have died. Almost 50 percent of divorced women have also been identified as grappling with poverty.

In addition, the poverty rate was 31.6 percent among surveyed working women, compared to 25.1 percent among men.

Health and Welfare Ministry statistics indicate that Japan is now registering record poverty levels; the year 2010 saw the highest number of welfare recipients in the last several decades, with 2.09 million people, or 16 percent of the population, requiring government assistance.

Against this backdrop, Akiko Suzuki, of the non-profit ‘Inclusive Net’, which supports the homeless, explained to IPS that Abe’s proposed changes and targets are highly illusive.

“After years of working with low-income people, I link the increase in females grappling with poverty to the rising number of part-time or contract jobs that are replacing full-time positions in companies,” she said.

The nursing industry, for instance, employs the highest number of part-time employees in Japan, of which 90.5 percent are women.

Inclusive Net reports that women currently comprise 20 percent of the average 3,000 people per month actively seeking support for their economic woes, up from less than 10 percent three years ago.

“We have women who are desperate. Because they do not hold secure jobs, they endure searing problems such as domestic violence or workplace harassment,” said Suzuki.

Japan has 20 million temporary workers, accounting for 40 percent of its workforce. Females comprise 63 percent of those holding jobs that pay less than 38 percent of a full-time worker’s salary.

Aya Abe, poverty researcher at the NIPSSR, told IPS that poverty among women has been a perennial problem in Japanese society, where they traditionally play second fiddle to men.

“For decades women have managed to get by despite earning less because they had earning husbands or lived with their parents. They also lived frugally. The recent poverty trend can then be related to less women getting married or being stuck in low-paid, part-time or contract work,” she stated.

A highlight of the prime minister’s gender empowerment proposals is the plan to remove a sacred tax benefit for husbands that also protects their working spouses who earn less than 10,000 dollars annually.

The tax was introduced in 1961 when Japan was composed of mostly single-income households led by male breadwinners under the life-term employment system.

Proponents say discarding the tax benefit will encourage women to work full-time while others argue this could increase women’s vulnerability by stripping them of a crucial social safety net.

While the political debate rages on, hundreds of thousands of Japanese women are struggling to make it through these dark days, with no sign of a silver lining. According to experts like Suzuki, “An aging population and unstable jobs means the feminisation of poverty is here to stay.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Sri Lankan youth feel that a conservative older generation is hampering national reconciliation. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 21 2014 (IPS)

It has been five years since Sri Lanka’s brutal three-decades-long civil conflict came to an end in May 2009, but for the country’s youth, true national reconciliation is still a long way off.

They blame a lack of understanding, and the older generation’s unwillingness to compromise, for on-going divisions in this country where years of ethnic strife created a culture of discord that was not defeated on the battlefield.

Youth activists and government officials have voiced a unanimous appeal to Sri Lanka’s national leaders to listen to the roughly five million citizens between the ages of 15 and 25 who will determine the country’s future.

If these young people are marginalised, a lasting peace will be impossible, they say.

Milinda Rajapaksha, working director at the National Youth Services Council, told IPS his organisation has been coordinating youth programmes across the country, which have made clear that young people from different ethnic backgrounds are willing to work together.

The Council is the largest government organisation of its kind working exclusively with young people. With chapters all over the island, it has already conducted some 20 nationwide programmes aimed at reconciliation.

“Understanding, collaboration and cooperation between young people is the only solution for fully achieved reconciliation,” Rajapaksha said.

Given that thousands of young people fought in the war – either as soldiers for the Sinhala-majority Sri Lankan government or as forced conscripts of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – it is crucial that youth build bridges across their embattled and bloody history.

Another factor to keep in mind, according to Ramzi Zain Deen, national director of the advocacy body Sri Lanka Unites, is that the country’s population pyramid is becoming top-heavy.

“In Sri Lanka we are experiencing an aging population. There’ll be more people over 40 years of age in the next 10 to 15 years, including myself, which means there’ll be more people who [are] resistant to change,” Deen told IPS.

As of 2011, 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population was over 60 years of age; the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that by 2025 the elderly will account for 20 percent of the population.

Although youth and adolescents comprise a higher portion of the population – roughly 26 percent – their lack of access to political power means they are reliant on the older generation to disseminate their views.

But far from feeling confident that they are in safe hands, many of the country’s young people say they are not even being listened to, much less represented as indispensible players in their nation’s future.

Leaving behind the baggage

Pradeep Dharmalingam is a young man hailing from the country’s northern province, which, until 2009, was under the control of the LTTE. Every week, the 20-year-old makes the 360-km journey from Jaffna to the capital Colombo.

But no matter where he is, he told IPS, he feels great reluctance on the part of the older generation to embrace change. Questions like the devolution of power to local provinces, for instance – particularly to the majority-Tamil northern and eastern regions – are highly loaded issues, with the older generation reluctant to let go of its staid ideas regarding the political future of the country.

“In Colombo I see one end of the spectrum, where people talk about development and money, and nothing else; in Jaffna the only thing I hear is talk about political change.

“There is no middle ground,” he complained, “no one from our parents’ generation telling us how we can break down the divisions within our country,” Dharmalingam, a member of the ethnic Tamil minority, added.

His friend and classmate in a Colombo-based computer programme, Anil Dassanayake, told IPS the older generation must stop “pointing accusing fingers and let go of the past.”

The 21-year-old Dassanayake acknowledged that young people couldn’t fully understand what it must have been like to live through a war that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives over three decades.

“It must have been terrible,” he said, “but we have to try our best to come together as a nation.”

One of the obstacles, says Deen, is that the older generation sees reconciliation and development as separate issues, whereas young people view them as parallel movements, working in tandem.

“It is important for everyone in this country to understand the concept of harmonious living,” he stressed. “That’s why we are working with the younger crowd [who] recognise that peace and harmony correlate highly with the development of this country.”

Deen’s fears find echo in the post-war development initiatives that have permeated Sri Lanka’s former war zones in the north and east.

Here, a young Tamil man named Benislos Thushan tells IPS, mega development projects have failed to improve the lives of the local population, possibly due to lingering racial discrimination against the Tamil minority.

“There are big highways [being built] and other projects in the works, but people in the province are still poor, still looking for jobs,” he said.

The government claims it has spent close to four billion dollars on large infrastructure development schemes in the northern province alone, but available data show that unemployment rates in the north are double the national average of four percent.

Officials in the province say that many graduates and other educated youth in the region remain unemployed, or seek jobs below their qualifications outside the province.

“There are no management jobs here,” Sivalingam Sathyaseelan, secretary to the provincial ministry of education, told IPS. “The only available employment falls in the category of day-labour. Most of the youth want something better than that.”

(END)

For many Japanese women, old age is becoming synonymous with poverty and loneliness. Credit: Isado/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 10 2012 (IPS)

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians.

“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS. Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.

Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less – barely enough to cover their living costs.

A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.

According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace – often as part-time workers – only when their children are older; this pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.

Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.

Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.

“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.

Aging in a patriarchal society

Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

If the present trends continue, experts predict that 40 percent of the senior population will be female: women are clocking 86.5 years, compared to 79.6 years for men.

Higuchi, who is also a prominent women’s rights activist, has lobbied the government long and hard to develop policies that meet the needs of elderly women.

Among the many issues that aging women face are loneliness, higher prospects of disability and growing poverty in a nation that is grappling with a huge public debt and threatening further cuts in social services and state welfare.

Official statistics from the Health and Welfare Ministry confirm this grim picture – government data shows that 80 percent of those over 65 years and living alone are women, mostly divorcees and widows.

Women also comprise 70 percent of the population in nursing homes, with poverty affecting 25 percent of the female population over 75 years compared to 20 percent among males.

The Ministry also reported that in 2011 there were almost 420,000 women over the age of 65 who depended on welfare handouts, compared to 324,000 men.

According to the prominent Japanese feminist Junko Fukazawa, who counsels women facing domestic violence – a risk she says is increasingly common for older women living with their husbands or sons – deep-rooted gender discrimination makes women even more vulnerable to the troubles of the sunset years.

Social traditions that have forced women to take care of the family while men worked outside “is the prime reason why women give up their jobs when they have children, (and end up with) lower paying jobs and financial instability in their old age”, Fukazawa told IPS.

“The situation is ironic,” she added, pointing out that those who have traditionally been the primary caregivers for young and old alike are now becoming a population that needs the most support.

The critical need to focus national aging policies on women is gaining traction around the world. A new report, ‘Aging in the Twenty-First Century’, released in September by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calls on governments and other stakeholders to take heed of the mounting body of evidence that women are living longer than men, and adjust their national plans accordingly.

The report documented figures around the world that showed that for every 100 women aged 80 years and over, there are only 61 men.

Aging in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, illustrates some of these pressing issues against the backdrop of a shrinking working population, which is expected to plummet from 80 to 52 million by 2050.

For the younger generation of Japanese women, who are coming of age during a time of government austerity and desperate attempts to reduce public spending, the forecast is alarming.

Already this generation of women is beginning to feel the crunch of poverty, with Labour Department statistics pointing to a rise in lower-paid part-time female employment, a trend that indicates an erosion of retirement stability for a large portion of the labour force.

For Higuchi, “The current aging picture clearly shows that Japan’s economic growth policies have eroded traditional family values that protected old people and have been particularly unfair to women.”

Meanwhile, women like Taguchi are moving cautiously down the road. “Acutely aware that I would face a lonely future, I have saved for decades and will continue to do so. At least I can avoid poverty – I hope so, anyway.”

(END)

Aged women sitting in front of an old age home in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
NEW/DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Nov 9 2012 (IPS)

At midnight on Oct. 12, 91-year-old George Puthenveettil, a widower living in Kalanjur village in the Pathanamthita district of the southern Indian state of Kerala, was brutally tortured and ousted from his own house by his only son for “not earning any money”.

The nonagenarian wandered the streets of his village for hours before he reached a shelter in Pathanapuram with the help of neighbours. Police said the son had often beaten and harassed the old man, who was financially dependent on his son.

For many people like George, the sunset years of life turn out to be a traumatic period, in which they find themselves entirely dependent on families or friends due to the absence of a good social security system or government pension plan in India.

Expressing concern over the increasing insecurity of elders in the country, Dr. Irudaya Rajan, a prominent demographer and chair professor of the research unit on international migration under the Ministry of Indian Overseas Affairs, told IPS that income security is one of the most urgent needs of India’s aging population.

Years ago, “traditional values and religious beliefs were quite supportive of elderly people”, he said.

Today, economic hardships and the faltering nuclear family system are “drastically eroding the support base of aged people”.

“The majority of the elderly tend to work even after the age of retirement due to inadequate social security and financial resources,” Rajan added.

A report on the aging population in India, released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) in New Delhi, said that the country had 90 million elderly people in 2011, with the number expected to grow to 173 million by 2026.

Of the 90 million seniors, 30 million are living alone, and 90 percent work for a living.

Experts estimate that only eight percent of the labour force of about 460 million receives social security from an employer.

‘Informal’ labourers left out in the cold

Over 94 percent of India’s working population is part of the unorganised sector, which refers to all unlicensed, self-employed or unregistered economic activity such as owner-manned general stores, handicrafts and handloom workers, rural traders and farmers, among many others.

Gopal Krishnan, an economist in Chennai, told IPS “There is no social safety coverage for people in the unorganised sector, which accounts for half of the GDP (gross domestic product) of India”.

According to the World Bank, India’s GDP in 2011 was 1,848 billion dollars.

In 2006, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector recommended that the Union Government establish a National Social Security Scheme to provide the minimum level of benefits to workers retiring from the informal sector.

Until now, the government has not been able to compile a comprehensive policy to address the issues of elderly people. The ministry of social justice and empowerment drafted a National Policy on Older Persons in 1999, which was never implemented.

Hardships abound

Analysts point out that India’s aging population is constantly grappling with health issues, economic stress, family matters, uncertain living arrangements, gender disparities, urban-rural differences, displacement and slum-like living conditions.

Dr. Udaya Shankar Mishra, a senior demographer at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, believes the current “profile” of the aging population of India can change.

“The (perception) of the elderly as a burden can, with suitable policies, be turned into an opportunity to realise active and healthy aging,” he told IPS.

“With limited resources, we need to adopt viable policy changes to manage the crisis of the aged. This calls for a detailed auditing of (all) the affairs of the elderly, primarily health, morbidity and mortality in addition to economic and emotional wellbeing.

“Research on geriatric health needs to (shift) towards ensuring a better quality of life among future elderly persons. Considering the demographic inversion and its associated challenges, it (is clear) that investments into healthy aging are necessary,” he added.

Data from the 2011 National Census revealed that the percentage of aged living alone or with spouse is as high as 45 percent in Tamil Nadu, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Kerala.

Healthcare experts have found that the elderly are highly prone to heart diseases, respiratory disorders, renal diseases, diabetes, hypertension, neurological problems and prostate issues.

The National Sample Survey Organisation calculates that one out of two elderly people in India suffers from at least one chronic disease, which requires lifelong medication.

The most recent data available, taken for the period 1995-96, revealed that 75 percent of aged individuals are affected by at least one disability relating to sight, hearing, speech, walking, and senility.

Dr. Shanti Johnson, professor at the faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the Canada-based University of Regina, estimates that nearly eight percent of the elderly are immobile, while a disproportionately higher percentage of women are immobile compared to men.

“The average hospitalisation rate in the country per 100,000 aged persons is 7,633. There is considerable gender difference in the rate of hospitalisation, as a much greater proportion of men are hospitalised compared to their female counterparts,” she added.

Non-governmental organisations are advocating for more old-age homes, day-care centers, physiotherapy clinics and temporary shelters for the rehabilitation of older persons, with government funds allocated to the running and maintaining of such projects.

(END)

Youngsters swimming along the Havana malecón, the oceanside drive. Credit. Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 19 2012 (IPS)

Mabel Suárez, a 22-year-old Cuban woman, can’t concentrate on enjoying her youth. She helped take care of her great-grandmother for two years, and she knows that, whether she likes it or not, it will fall to her to take care of her grandparents and parents in their old age.

Enjoying her youth “was something my mom was able to do. She was one of two children, and they had a family that was quite large and relatively young. Now the years have passed, I’m an only child, and a good part of my family lives outside of Cuba. When my great-grandmother got sick, I had no option but to take care of her,” Suárez, a university student, told IPS.

“I loved my great-grandmother very much, but I would have preferred not to have to go through that. It was crazy. I would rush home from my classes so that my mom could go to work. For more than a year, it was either the university or home, without even thinking about going to a party or anything.”

The responsibility of taking care of the elderly is beginning to fall on Cuba’s young people. To what extent is one of the questions that will be revealed by the Population and Housing Census, which is being conducted from Sept. 15 to 24.

It is not just a question of Suárez spending her life as part of a clear minority in dealing with the aging of her loved ones; when she herself begins to grow old, there may be very few people around her in a position to take care of her.

By the time she turns 35, in 2025, about 26 percent of Cuba’s inhabitants will be 60 or older, and the average age will have risen to 44.

Cuba is one of the countries in the region with the most advanced and accelerated aging process, according to the Latin American and Caribbean Demographics Centre.

Perhaps it is this context that explains why a study conducted among students at the University of Havana found fear of aging, which most of those interviewed identified with decline and loneliness.

In addition to uncertainty, the study found “sadness, concern and fear of loneliness, of not being taken care of or paid attention to by one’s family,” said a summary of the study, published in 2011 by the online newsletter of the Luis Montané Department of Anthropology of the University of Havana’s Faculty of Biology.

According to the study, “The social representation of a group of university students regarding aging”, those surveyed feared they would be ignored by society once they were old. Along the same line, they said that older adults needed to be better understood, and more respected and valued by Cuban society, because they were living through “a stage of experience and wisdom.”

Given the social devaluation of aging in Cuba and in the rest of the world, “the big challenge for Cuban anthropology, therefore, could be its ability to conduct studies…that help people, as they go through old age, to feel useful and to participate in the diverse tasks of the community where they reside,” the newsletter said.

“We have to realise that in a decade, there won’t just be more old people,” sound engineer Rodolfo García, who has been self-employed for the last year, told IPS. “My generation, which is now entering its 50s, attended university almost en masse. It is a very well-educated generation that will try to lengthen its useful life, and that will face aging differently than our parents did.”

A project for encouraging new models of intergenerational relations is being sponsored by the Centre for Health Promotion and Education in the central province of Cienfuegos, with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF).

It is a matter of promoting relationships based on “respect and communication,” in addition to “tapping into the experiences and knowledge of older people without impositions, in spaces where they can share, and where useful elements can be contributed to each participant to ensure his or her health,” Dr. Graciela Martín, the centre’s director, told IPS.

According to a document on the project, which is being implemented in several Cienfuegos municipalities, “older adults know that they are necessary and that they are important reference points, even in societies where being old is not valued.”

“Development contributes to the survival of the elderly, but it has not always placed at their disposal the possibilities for using their abilities and satisfying their needs,” the document says. The preconception that equates aging with a “problem that is inevitable and bearable until death ends it” needs to be overcome.

This strategy is based on the creation of informational foundations, for raising awareness among the population and state institutions; educating young and middle-aged people about aging with quality of life; implementing programmes for services for older adults; and developing a culturing of aging as a dynamic element in society.

“By creating a culture of health, we are forming an extensive treasure trove of knowledge and reasoning that people use as a starting point for their information. When people face life from that perspective,” they can discern between positive and negative, even at an advanced age, Martín said.

In essence, it is a matter of contributing to “a positive attitude toward life,” she added.

100 million people in India are over the age of 60 years. Credit: Al Jazeera English/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
NEW DELHI, Aug 7 2012 (IPS)

Mr. Jayakumar (73), a philanthropic bachelor hailing from a prosperous industrial family in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, decided at the age of 70 that it was time to settle down.

He began to search for an old age home where he could retire without giving up the things he enjoyed most – reading spiritual and philosophical books and going for long walks.

He found just what he was looking for at Panchvati, a residential care home located in the busy centre of south Delhi, designed especially for senior citizens like himself.

“What attracted me to this place was the absence of restrictions placed on the residents,” he told IPS. “I was looking for a place where I could have freedom and I found it here. I go for long walks at a nearby public park and am actively involved in the running of the establishment.”

But in a country where the ageing population is growing rapidly, senior citizens like Jayakumar are part of a tiny, privileged minority that can afford the comfort and security of quality retirement homes.

According to the 2011 census, ten percent of India’s population of 1.2 billion people is over 60 years of age. These 100 million elderly are almost completely politically disenfranchised and increasingly reliant on paltry state services and far-flung families for economic, social and physical support.

Most elderly Indians are forced to make do with sub-standard residences that offer neither personal care nor the comforting environment of a home away from home.

Retired government employees earn pensions between the range of 8,000 and 50,000 rupees (144-896 dollars) per month.

With old age homes costing between 5,000 and 20,000 rupees (89-358 dollars) monthly, it is clear that few can afford professional care in their old age.

In fact, government statistics indicate that only three percent of those seeking institutional care actually manage to secure a place in any of these homes.

Ageing population

Mortality rates in India increased from 60-65 years throughout the decade of the 1980s, and from 90-95 years in the 2000s, Avenash Datta, country head of programmes and emergencies at HelpAge India, told IPS.

“The real issue is of longevity. Families are not able to cope financially with the health demands of their elderly loved ones, since the government does not provide subsidies or tax exemptions for care of the elderly,” he said.

According to data compiled by HelpAge India, the country’s largest voluntary organisation working in the service of economically disadvantaged elderly people, there were just 484 old age homes in 2010, serving a population of about 24,500 people spread across 15 metro and non-metro areas.

Meanwhile, a 2009 survey indicated that there were 1279 such homes, serving a population of 44,765 people, each with an average capacity of 35 residents.

Each of these homes had a substantial waiting list.

Data collected by the NGO also indicates that more and more children are migrating abroad in search of better opportunities, leaving their old folks behind. In addition, young people are increasingly establishing their homes further away from their original communities, resulting in a steady rise of old people living alone.

Unaffordable care

The plight of the elderly is even worse in the villages, where such facilities are practically non-existent.

“Seventy per cent of India’s elderly (about seven million people) lives in rural areas,” Datta told IPS. “Of these, 90 percent lead a hand-to-mouth existence and have to work until they die.”

“Their plight is worsened by the fact that 70 percent of them toil in the unorganised sector”, which includes un-contracted farm labourers, small and landless farmers, domestic workers, textile industry employees, workers in brick kilns, carpenters, fisherfolk, vegetable vendors, barbers, tailors and rickshaw pullers among many other occupations.

Though the elderly account for a significant chunk of the country’s population, they have no voice in policymaking, lamented Aabha Chaudhary, founder of Anugraha, a daycare centre for senior citizens established in east Delhi in 2005.

In 2010, Anugraha became the country’s first regional and resource training centre (RRTC) on ageing under the ministry of social justice and empowerment.

Chaudhary told IPS the government has yet to act upon a 2007 legislation that makes it mandatory for states to care for elders. “The ‘Maintenance and Protection of Senior Citizens and Parents Act’ of 2007 contains a clause that (requires) state governments to have one old age home in each district of the country, but this has not happened,” she stressed.

HelpAge India is now lobbying the government to establish more old age homes right down to the village level.

“We have submitted a proposal to the government for inclusion in the 12^th Five-Year Plan for the welfare of elderly, especially the destitute poor among the elderly, as most old age homes with appropriate facilities are in the exclusive domain of private goods and only a few (operate) on the charity-based model,” Datta told IPS.

“We have suggested a three-tier model with a 200-bed home at the state level, another at the district level and finally low-cost homes at the village level,” he added.

For the tiny minority that can afford them, homes like Panchavati are model facilities, designed to eliminate the stigma attached to ageing in a fast-paced economy.

Panchavati’s founder, Neelam Mohan, claims it is a “home away from home with the traditional joint family setting, where residents have the freedom to decide their own recipes, be involved in the functioning of the home, dress up for festivals and call friends and family over for visits whenever they like”.

The former businesswoman converted her four-storey factory into a personalised home, comprised of 38 living spaces for couples as well as individuals, each with its own bedroom and bathroom and with libraries, lounges and open spaces on each floor.

The rents are unavoidably stiff due to astronomical land prices in India’s biggest cities, a problem compounded by the government’s refusal to allow tax exemptions for retirement homes.

Agreeing that much needs to be done to alleviate the plight of the elderly, especially those in dire straits, Neelam told IPS that Panchvati regularly facilitates training programmes  and medical camps for the poor.

“With assistance from HelpAge India, we provide in-house physiotherapy free of cost to the entire colony and we are engaged in talks with the Delhi government about setting up more old age homes in the city,” she said.

(END)