The Hindu : `By 2050 older people will outnumber children'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 03, 2002

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`By 2050 older people will outnumber children'

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi March 2.

By 2050, the United Nations projects that one out of every five persons will be 60 or older and that by 2150 this ratio will be one out of every three persons. By 2050 the actual number of people over the age of 60 is projected to be almost 2 billion at which point the population of older people will outnumber children.

Today one out of every 10 persons is 60 years old or over, totalling 629 million people worldwide. These statistics were released by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The study said that the world had experienced dramatic improvements in terms of longevity. Life expectancy at birth has climbed about 20 years since 1950, to the current level of 66 years. Of those surviving to the age 60, men can expect to live another 17 years and women an additional 20 years. But large differences in mortality level exist between countries.

In the least developed countries, men reaching age 60 can expect only 15 more years of life and women 16 years. In the more developed regions, on the other hand, life expectancy at age 60 is 18 more years for men and 23 years for women.

The majority of older persons are women. Worldwide, there are 81 men aged 60 or over for every 100 women and among the oldest, there are 53 men for every 100 women.

Countries with high per capita incomes tend to have lower participation rates of older workers. Only 31 per cent of men aged 60 years or older were still economically active in more developed regions, as compared with 50 per cent of men in less developed regions.

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