Growing old:
population
ageing
Fertility, Mortality and Social Change
GEOG20016
Photo credit: Ibu Kemi of Gunung Kidul, Peter McDonald, Ageing in Rural Indonesia Project.
Today: population ageing
1. Introduction:
Demographic perspective of ageing: Definition and the two dimensions of population
ageing
2. Indicators
3. Gender and ageing
4. Depressing streak in demography: too many people, too few people – from one
“population bomb” to another: demographic “time bomb”. Clips on ageing in Japan.
How will an ageing population change the
world?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4r0S5qoIXc
2:10 minutes
Definition, concepts,
causes, implications
Introduction
Population ageing:
definition
Definition: increasing share of older persons in the population
Important because:
“ Population ageing—the increasing share of older
persons in the population—is poised to become one of
the most significant social transformations of the twenty-
first century, with implications for nearly all sectors of
society, including labour and financial markets, the
demand for goods and services, such as housing,
transportation and social protection, as well as family
structures and inter-generational ties.”
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publica
tions/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Report.pdf
Shift in
terminology
https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wile
y.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.16848
“Based on American Geriatrics Society (AGS)
work with the Leaders of Aging Organizations
and the FrameWorks Institute, these
recommendations were grounded in building
better public perceptions of aging.
They reinforced “that words like (the) aged,
elder(s), (the) elderly, and seniors should not
be used . . . because [they] connote
discrimination and certain negative
stereotypes.”1 The journal thus adopted “older
adult(s)” and “older person/people” as
preferred terminology, explicitly advocating
against using “the elderly,” “senior(s),” and/or
“senior citizen(s).”
Population Ageing: cause
Read: Natalie Jackson’s articles :
https://eprints.utas.edu.au/3724/1/3724.pdf;
https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/docum
ents/05_2012/prp_no_13.pdf
• Population ageing is the inevitable outcome of
demographic transition
• DT:
– Shift from “traditional” society with high
birth and death rates to “modern” society
with low birth and death rates. Fertility and
mortality transitions in between
– Shift from young and growing population to
old and potentially declining population
Increase in proportions of older adults (usually defined as
population aged 60/65 and over). Driven primarily by
falling fertility
Decline in IMR and increasing LE also partly contribute to
increasing numbers and share of older adults in
population, but if you have high fertility rates, population
will not age structurally.
Structural
ageing:
Primarily driven by falling mortality.
Falling IMR – more survives into adulthood
Increasing LE - high probability of reaching old age
High fertility in baby boom years (e.g. after WWIi)
contributes to numerical ageing (and structural ageing),
but population will not experience increase in number of
older adults if mortality rates were high.
Numerical
ageing:
Why make distinction between structural and
numerical ageing
– Understand different primary drivers
– Implications on overall population dynamics (and links with migration)
– Implications on public policy
Why make distinction between numerical and
structural ageing
Policy implications
• Numerical ageing:
– Increasing demand for income support and health care provision
– Increasing cost (government spending) on income support and health care provision
• Structural ageing:
– Decline in population of workforce age
– Decline in tax base
– Hard for governments to fund increasing demand for income support and health care
provisions!
What does an ageing workforce mean for economic growth?
• Extend retirement age: increasing life expectancy changes meaning of “old” – work longer
• Ageism: Are older workers less creative/innovative/less productive?
Population ageing = progress, or curse?
Population ageing is the “fruits” of economic and human development, but also entails challenges!
Population ageing
and migration
Week 11 – frictions
Third demographic transition:
- Linking birth, death and migration
- Persistently low fertility and increased life
expectancy → population ageing
- “Unprecedented growth in racial and ethnic
minorities population in the developed world”
- Changing composition of the population due to
long-term low fertility, and migration
- Super diversity – not just changing numbers
and %, but complex socio-econ interactions.
- Ageing (and dying) in foreign land? -
infrastructure for health and aged care
If NOM does not offset natural decline: absolute decline in population size
Natural decline (currently Australia natural increase)
More deaths than births (BMore older adults than kids
Structural and numerical ageing
Demographic transition: fertility and mortality decline
Some indicators
How old is old? Who is
old?
Across many cultures, implicit assumption behind old age= when individuals can no
longer work.
Most common definition is 65+. Ageing is not only about chronological age. At
societal level, spatio-temporal variation on who is old, also depending on
relational context within a community.
Ageing in Rural Indonesia project: work till you drop!
• Indonesia’s LE=69 years of age
“Rich” economies today:
• Age of retirement is 65.
• Mortality transition and increasing LE → Significant “gap” between onset of
retirement and end of life
• Generation X: looking forward to be 65+ → period of leisure, good health but
retired from the labour force. (But, this may no longer be the case with
uncertainties over the future of work)
• Concept of “Third Age”: a time when individuals are still healthy enough to
engage in activities (“active ageing”)
• “Fourth Age”: age of physical and cognitive decline. For indicators purposes,
defined as 80 or 85. But this will likely be changed along with health
improvements/medical technology/higher LE.
• Talks of extending age of retirement because of higher LE
Share (or per cent or proportion of population
aged 65 and over)
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/older-people/older-australia-at-a-
glance/contents/demographics-of-older-australians/australia-s-changing-age-and-gender-profile
% of population aged
80 years and over,
among population
aged 60+
“Older population itself is ageing!”
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publica
tions/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Report.pdf
Median age of population
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-median-age-of-every-continent/
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-of-the-population-in-every-country/
Dependency ratio
• Total dependency ratio: measure of potential support of
needs of young and elderly “dependents”
• Ratio between young people aged less than 20 and elderly
aged 65+, to working age population aged 20-64.
• Falling fertility → global dependency ratio has been declined
but expected to rise in next decades because of ageing.
• Old-age dependency ratio reflects the number of persons
aged 65 years or over in a population relative to the number
of persons aged 20-64 years.
• Population ageing → successive cohorts will have less adult
children to provide “support” (directly and indirectly as tax
base/social security transfers)
• Assumption: young and old are in age of dependence. They
need working-age population to support.
• But “chronological” age does not necessarily determine
dependency status. Increase in LE → delayed onset of
dependency → years of life remaining as a proxy for
dependency rather than years of life already lived
(chronological age)”
• Prospective old-age dependency ratio (POADR): the number
of persons above the age closest to a remaining life
expectancy of 15 years relative to the number of persons
between age 20 and that age.
• Projections: when using POADR, slower increase or decline
in dependency ratio than when using
traditional/conventional dependency ratio
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Report.pdf
Example
Total age dependency ratio=
(People aged less than 15 + people aged 65 and over)/( number of people in working age)
Old-age dependency ratio= (People aged 65+)/ (population aged 20-64)
But with increasing LE, and better health in older ages:
Life expectancy =85; then 85-15 =70
POADR - Prospective old-age dependency ratio “the number of persons above the age closest to a
remaining life expectancy of 15 years relative to the number of persons between age 20 and that age.”
POADR= (people aged 71+)/(people between the ages of 20-70)
Notice lower and upper bound - Why 20
Recall Week 7 Lecture: Can we link this to
protracted TTA? - Is DTT only a story about
living longer? What does protracted TTA
mean? Age at first marriage? Age at first
birth? Age at having own first home?
Gender and ageing
In most countries, women tend to live longer than men
Proposed reasons:
• Gendered risky behaviuor
• Gap largest in 1900s , slower mortality decline for males than female -
perhaps due to smoking
• Research in gender-specific medicine and age-related diseases: gut
microbes, hormonal differences to help explain gender gap in longevity.
Trend in high income countries
• Narrowing gap due to sex differences in age patterns of mortality rather
than declining sex ratios in mortality:
• “ same rate of mortality decline produces smaller gains in e(0) for
women than for men because women's deaths are less dispersed across
age (i.e., survivorship is more rectangular).” (Glei and Horiuchi, 2007:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00324720701331433?sr
c=recsys&journalCode=rpst20
Small gap in developing countries due to women’s lower position in society
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/countries-where-women-outlive-
men-by-decade/
Gender and ageing
Some Implications:
• Gendered care regime.
• Most carers of elderly are female spouses: women
live older, men marry younger women.
• Widowhood and loneliness.
• Feminisation of poverty and vulnerability in later
life.
• Australia – higher proportion of women work in
part-time employment:
– Women reached retirement age with 37 % less
superannuation savings than men men
– “Women aged between 55 and 64 have an
average of $196,000 in the bank, compared with
$310,000 on average for men.”
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australian-women-retire-
with-37-per-cent-less-super-than-men
Marriage and family change, population ageing and
implications on intergenerational relationship
Gender:
• Gender inequality over the life course: case of gender gap in labour market and
retirement outcomes. (reflect on gendered labour force outcomes from last week)
Weakening of marriage?
• Diversity of family forms (Week 9)
• Family disruptions ands caring obligations.
Does marriage still matter (reflect on our lecture in Week 9)?
• Studies on “differentials” on who gets to get married/who marries whom; who have kids
outside of marriage and whether this matters (race/class inequalities);
• How marital status/timing/type predicts other life outcomes (in later life: wealth,
inequalities, life satisfaction, health and well-being)
Intergenerational relationship:
• Tensions around care expectations of elderly parents because of swift changes in fertility.
• Rural pockets of ageing: skipped generation families
• Tensions around changing roles of grandparenting:
– Past: Available grandmother
– Now: Grandmother with careers, mothers “lacking” support to build own career.
– Co-residing grandmother/close proximity as predictor of mother’s labour force
participation
https://www.scmp.com/week-
asia/society/article/2128700/one-
60-million-life-left-behind-child-
china
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/
world/asia/japan-dolls-shrinking-
population-nagoro.html
Depressing streak in demography? Japan’s “demographic time bomb”
Be careful and critical of using emotive language!
Discourse to catastrophize demographic change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tALSvwS1XAM about 50 minutes

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