Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborti

The demographic landscape of Asia has seen unprecedented changes over the past 50 years of the post-Second World War era. A rapid and spectacular transition from high to relatively low mortality and fertility is not only slowing population growth but also fundamentally changing the age composition of Asia’s populations. All across Asia, the proportions of population aged sixty and above are rising and are projected to rise significantly in the next fifty years.

After a century of unprecedented growth, the number of children reached a peak in 1999 and with the turn of the millennium, as most population projections indicate, will begin a slow, steady decline. The number of children (defined as people aged 0-4) in Asia was only 20.3 million in 1950. It rose to a peak level of 37.0 million in 1995. This number, however, is projected to fall to 36.5 million in 2000, a trend that will continue for all future times for which medium variant projections are available. At the same time, mortality has dropped dramatically. The Crude Death Rate (CDR) dropped from 23.9 in 1950-55 to 8.3 in 1990-95.

While further decline in the death rate is not easy, projections indicate that by the first decade of the new millennium (2000-2005), the CDR will reach its all time low levels of 7.3. Life expectancy at birth increased from 41.3 years in 1950-55 to 60.4 in 1980-85 and is projected to rise to 67.9 in 2000-05 and further to 76.9 in 2040-50. Fertility has also declined considerably. The Crude Birth Rate (CBR) dropped from 42.8 in 1950 to 24.1 in 1995.

With improvements in socio-economic standards and fertility control programmes, the CBR will record a continuous declining trend and is projected to reach 13.0 in 2040-50. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) per women, which was as high as 5.91 in 1950-55, fell to 2.85 in 1990-95. If our assumptions are correct, it will fall further to 2.03 in 2040-50. These three phenomena: (a) the enormous and sustained baby boom that characterised the twentieth century; (b) the continuing, steady decline in mortality; and (c) the decline in fertility that will characterise the twenty first century- will have major implications on the size and age structure of Asian populations.

As a sequel to these change across Asia, the proportions of national populations aged 60 plus are expected to grow rapidly over the next 50 years. This process of population ageing has already been marked in the economically advanced countries of East Asia. It is clearly visible in the Southeast Asian countries that have successfully increased life expectancy and reduced fertility. This trend is now visible in South Asia too.

Ironically, in the latter group countries where the number of children is still very high today, the elderly make up the second largest group among the geographic sub-regions of the world, followed in World Population Prospects,¹ a publication by the United Nations.

This scenario of rising number of elderly population and pensioners has widely been described as “a demographic time bomb”, an economic disaster simply waiting to happen². In a more recent book, Paul Wallace dramatically describes this phenomenon as “agequake”³, implying that the new age trends are capable of creating devastation similar to an earthquake⁴.

While ageing research has been well developed and documented in Europe and other developed countries including Japan in Asia, they are yet to shape in most parts of Asia. The lack of interest on ageing researches in Asia owe its origin to a great extent to the belief that the family support system is and will continue to be a full proof insurance against all problems faced during old age.

It is true family is an effective provider of old age support in India and most other Asian countries and in the absence of institutional support, will probably continue to serve an important role. At the same time, the family also has its limitations, which are increasingly apparent, as social and economic development undermines traditional values and as elderly populations grow relative to the population expected to provide support to them.

It has been argued that increasing proportions of elderly would make their own conditions pitiable by drawing heavily on family’s humble resources, yielding to a very low-quality life. They would consume larger shares of national income, burdening future generations of taxpayers. Saving and investment would decline. At the same time, national productivity would decline as the median age of the workers grow.

The fertility reduction means that less number of children are available per parent to take care of them during their old age. The cost of parent caring per child has gone up and in the face of continuing financial crisis; most children do not have adequate financial resources to take care of their elderly parents. Where resources do not lack, psychological barriers have come up in way to parent caring. The opportunity of sharing costs often unites many unwilling heads.

Having survived many onslaughts on their health in the transition from high mortality periods, elderly requires special geriatric cares. Most hospitals do not have such facilities and where they exist, they are cost prohibitive. Even then, on average 10 to 15% of hospital beds in these countries are occupied by the senior citizens. The health economics principle suggests that long confinement cases be treated at home for better resource utilisation. Previously, the unemployed womenfolk had cared the elderly at home. Now with increasing female participation in the labour force, such caring avenues have narrowed greatly.

The housing shortages and the consequent reduction in housing space are robbing the elderly of their grossly eroded rights to privacy. The married sons now occupy the living rooms. The problem is all the more acute for elderly couples still in conjugal union.

Increasing number of elderly are found on the streets chasing for hazardous works. They have to be satisfied with low wages, insecurity of work and unhealthy working conditions. A large number of elderly are widowed women (Asian women normally used to marry men 10 to 15 years older and consequently they have to have a longer period of widowhood). Their conditions are further precarious as they are unable to fend for themselves. Abandonment of elderly widowed women; even from educated families is rapidly on the rise.

The West has tried to have a solution of this crisis through institutional support outside family system. Such attempts may not be viable in countries where funds are always scarce and where living outside one’s own family is a tragic proposition. But families may be unwilling to spend any extra money on the aged, particularly elderly among them because of low levels of return. Apart from their emotional value, the aged elderly has very little economic value to the family. With health care and long-term care costs rising at a rapid rate; negligence of the aged may take serious proportion.

At a time when the Western world is reshaping their programmes for the elderly, in order to contain costs as well as to mitigate the inter-generational conflict, many Asian countries have barely begun to think about the aged. There is hardly any social or economic infrastructure to support the old. Given the pace of population ageing in Asia and the corresponding lack of adjustment mechanisms, a “time bomb” or the “agequake” may not be very far.

Given this background of the problem, the book addresses the following issues:

 ·   Analyse the demographic and socio-economic characteristics such as size, age-sex composition, spatial distribution, social and economic conditions of the ageing populations in Asia.

 ·   Identify the factors responsible for ageing. Is fertility more dominating factor than mortality? What is the role of migration in changing the age composition of the population?

 ·   Understand the future trends and patterns of the ageing population and analyse its implications on socio-economic development programs related to health, savings, investment, consumption patterns, residence, work force participation, migration, social security etc.

 ·   Evaluate the role of family in supporting the aged. Here we addresses to two specific questions:

   i. To what extent should the West may be used as a model?

   ii. What should be the role of the family versus government in caring for elderly?

   iii. Identify some of the major policy options, that may be sincerely tried to create an environment which insures the elderly against all risks, including health hazards and allow older adults to maintain as much economic independence and self-sufficiency as possible without disturbing intergenerational balance.

In this research, efforts have been directed towards understanding the major social and economic implications of ageing. However, given the diversity of the continent and of the problem, we decide to concentrate on three countries in three big regions of the continent: India in the South- Central, Thailand in the Southeast and Japan in the east.

Economically, Japan is the most developed nation in Asia. Its GNP (at $4,089.9 billion) was the second largest in the world in 1998 after the United States. Japan had a GNP per capita of $32,380 in 1998. This was the seventh highest in the world. In comparison, Thailand’s per capita income was $2,200 and was placed in the middle income category. India had a per capita income of $430 in the same year and was placed 165th in the world. India is a low-income country by the definition of the World Bank.

Demographically also, these three countries are in three different stages of their transition and expectedly, the same trend has been maintained on population ageing too. Not only that, these three countries hold 10.89 million aged peoples out of 31.42 million aged populations in whole of Asia. This comes to 34.7 %. If we exclude Mainland China, these three countries of India, Japan and Thailand constitute 57.9% of elderly in Asia.

To facilitate comparisons across regions, this book uses the United Nations estimates and medium variant projections for most of demographic data. Where the UN data does not exist, the research draws its data sources from established agencies. The book draws heavily from the survey report on the Aged in India prepared by the country’s most prestigious statistical agency, National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). A comparison of the NSS 42nd Round (July 1986 – June 1987) data with the NSS 52nd Round (July 1995-June 1996) gives a fairly good idea about the change that the aged encountered in India over the last decade.

The book has been arranged in six chapters.

Chapter One introduces the global perspective of the problem concepts and measurements of population ageing. Chapter Two seeks to identify the factors responsible for population ageing in Asia. Chapter Three gets into various conceptual and measurement issues relating to population ageing. Chapter Four takes up the major consequences of population ageing. Chapter five reviews the status of elderly and prepares an Elderly status Index from the available data on the demographic characteristics of the elderly, to facilitate comparisons across geographic regions. Chapter Six discusses the policy options for the aged in Asia.

The book provides five appendices too. It uses a few technical demographic and economic concepts. These terms as well as a few others, which a serious reader of population ageing may encounter, get a place in the Glossary of Terms in the First appendix. The Second appendix lists the entire major Policies and Programmes of the governments in India for the aged. International Policy of Actions on the aged, including resolutions of the recently held Madrid Congress gets a place in appendix three.

One of the Asian countries, Vietnam has declared an Ordinance on the aged; the document may act as a forerunner in assigning legal sanction to the concerns on the aged. This Ordinance has been appended in Appendix Four. Appendix Five lists up some useful hints to the elderly to make their own lives more secured.

The abbreviations used are also introduced at the end.

NOTES & REFERENCES:

¹ United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, population Division, World Population Prospects The 1998 Revision, ST/ESA/SER.A/180, New York, 1999.

² Teitelbaum, M.S. and J.M.Winter. The Fear of Population Decline. Academic Press, Orlando, 1985 and also J. McLoughlin, The Demographic Revolution. Faber and Faber, London, 1991. Wallace, Paul. Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster Shaking Business and Our World. Nicolas Brearly Publishing, London, 1999.

³ Wallace, Paul. Agequake: Riding the Demographic Rollercoaster Shaking Business and Our World. Nicolas Brearly Publishing, London, 1999.

⁴ The metaphor of a "time bomb" or “age quake” used by some analysts to explain the ageing trends were really quite inaccurate. Bombs or earthquake explode with tremendous force, but such force is rapidly spent. A more appropriate metaphor for rapid ageing is that of a glacier, since a glacier moves at a slow pace but with enormous effects wherever it goes and with a long-term momentum that is unstoppable.

Copyright ©2002 Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborti