ABSTRACT
Population ageing, sometimes called demographic ageing, is now a worldwide phenomenon. Technically any population whose average age is rising can be said to be ageing, but usually the term is more specifically used with reference to an increase in the proportion of persons aged over 60 or 65.1 Such an increase has been taking place in the currently developed regions for well over a century and is now also increasingly evident in the countries of the lessdeveloped regions. Today we tend to think of the demographically older countries as comprising principally those in Europe and a few countries elsewhere. However, already well over half (59%) of the world’s older people are found in developing nations and by about 2050, of the expected 1.4 billion persons aged 65 and over worldwide, almost 80% (1.1 billion) are likely to be in the currently less developed regions. Barely 20% of the world’s older persons will by then live in what we today call the developed regions (Table 4.1).
