The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age

[n2doc]

08 April 2010 by Fred Pearce

USHI OKUSHIMA is the oldest resident of Ogimi, the most elderly community in Japan - the country where the average age is higher than anywhere else in the world. At 108, she still takes to the floor for traditional Japanese dances. Afterwards she dabs a little French perfume behind her ears and sips the local firewater. Okushima was born when Japan had only recently seen off the shogun warlords. If an ageing population is on the way, she is not a bad advert for what we have in store.

The land of the rising sun has become the land of the setting sun with staggering speed. As recently as 1984, Japan had the youngest population in the developed world, but by 2005 it had become the world's most elderly country. Soon it will become the first country where most people are over 50 years old.

This is partly because Japanese people live longest: men can expect to reach 79 and women 86. It is also partly because the Japanese have almost given up having babies: the fertility rate is just 1.2 children per woman, far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. The rest of the world is following Japan's example. In 19 countries, from Singapore to Iceland, people have a life expectancy of about 80 years. Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now. Meanwhile, women around the world have half as many children as their mothers. And if Japan is the model, their daughters may have half as many as they do.

Homo sapiens is ageing fast, and the implications of this may overwhelm all other factors shaping the species over the coming decades - with more wrinklies than pimplies, more walking frames than bike stabilisers, more slippers and pipes than bootees and buggies, and more grey power than student power. The longevity revolution affects every country, every community and almost every household. It promises to restructure the economy, reshape the family, redefine politics and even rearrange the geopolitical order over the coming century.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100-the-shock-of-the-old-welcome-to-the-elderly-age.html

[ensho]

1. kick

nt

[Warpy]

2. They want us to be brood mares, they're going to have to offer

either slavery or support. They tried slavery and the human race as a whole suffered. Maybe it'll dawn on them that supporting women whose career is home and children instead of despising them as mother hens and parasites on men will work better than slavery did.

The drive to procreate is a strong one. Unfortunately, it's being overridden by logistics for most of us. While we might want children, the prospect of being left alone with them to fend in a world that values our work less and our childcare not at all is daunting, to say the least. Every woman I know has limited her children to one or two because of it.

Perhaps this is a good thing because this planet can't support so many of us. However, articles that bemoan a greying population need to examine the real reasons women are curtailing their child production.

[Missy Vixen]

3. It's not just lack of "logistics"

Those who choose not to have children do so for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fact that with the advent of birth control, we don't have to. At all.

One of the more interesting facts I've ever read is that the more education any woman has, the lower her chance of having children.

Those of us who passed on having kids do so after a lot of self-examination. Plus, we endure years of well-meaning family and friend prying into why we've chosen this path. If we weren't fairly resolute in the decision, it tends to cement what's already there.

The "greying" of the future will be interesting as a result.