Ageing: Ageing Society – Trends and Statistics

America’s Demographic Future – The ageing of the United States is inevitable and today’s policy decisions will shape how the country meets the challenge. Thus concludes The Shape of Things, a quarterly report of the Concorde Coalition and the Global Aging Institute .

Demographic Change in Europe – Is Europe’s population shrinking? A short video gives a clear picture of demographic changes in Europe.

Gateway to Global Aging — USC Center for Global Aging Health and Policy. The Gateway to Global Aging is a platform for population survey data on aging around the world.  View their comprehensive technical resources, including surveys and charts.   

Ageing Europe — Looking at the Lives of Older People in the EU 2019 – this report provides a detailed picture of the daily lives of older people in the European Union. Details are shown for individual EU Member States and EFTA countries over six subjects: population; housing and living conditions; health and disability; working and moving into retirement; pensions, income and expenditure; social life and opinions.

Attitudes toward Ageing:  A 30-country survey shows that 1 in 3 people look forward to getting old. How do adults around the world think about ageing? This is the question a recent survey by Ipsos and the UK-based Centre for Ageing Better set out to answer. The results drawn from 20,000 people ages 16-64 from 30 countries showed marked differences in attitudes toward ageing. The most positive attitudes came from India and Turkey and the most negative from the USA. Globally, the upside of ageing included having more time to spend with friends and family (36%), for hobbies and leisure (32%), for holidays and travel (26%) and giving up work (26%). Downsides included worrying about not having enough money (3 in 10), losing mobility and losing memory.

Blue Zone Lessons – from People Around the World who have Lived the Longest. How do you score on these 9 healthy lifestyle habits of centenarians that Dan Buettner identified around the world?  In his research report titled ‘Blue Zones’, Buettner said:  “I saw how the environment dictated the lifestyle of the world’s healthiest people. They weren’t trying to be healthy. Their lifestyles helped them to: Move naturally, Know their purpose, Slow down, Apply the 80% rule, Plant slant, Wine at 5 pm, Family First, Belong, Right Tribe.” 

The Economics of LongevityThis special report titled “The New Old” was published by The Economist in London in July 2017.  With contributions from over 30 experts in ageing, it’s clear that the impacts of the Global Ageing trend are as great as those from Climate Change or New Technologies.  “Making longer lives financially more viable requires a fundamental rethink of life trajectories.”  “Given the right input from governments, employers and individuals, it should be possible to stretch the increasingly productive in-betweener stage and compress the dependent period at the very end of life.”  The report reinforces our appreciation of intergenerational programs with research that shows that, “Older people in multi-generation teams tend to boost the productivity of those around them.”

African Research on Aging – Four Arcs toward Transformation. Although 78% of the people in Africa are under the age of 35, its population of older adults is expected to quadruple between now and 2050, thanks to increased longevity and reduction in births. At the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Nairobi, Kenya, Dr. Isabella Aboderin is connecting socio-economic data about ageing in Africa with development agendas across the continent.