Disrupt Aging Before Aging Disrupts Economic Growth

The World Faces an Unprecedented Aging Crisis. But How Can We Turn This Challenge Into an Opportunity?

- Pamela Spence

Disputes over how to deal with the rising cost of health care are making health an increasingly central and controversial political battleground.

The reform of health care services is an immediate political concern in the US with the fight to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which has become one of the defining features of the Trump Administration. In Japan, the UK and elsewhere, governments and opposition parties dispute the best policies to provide the most effective and cost-efficient care for the elderly as the requirements of post-financial crisis budgets put pressure on politicians.

We need to stop focusing on shortterm political differences and focus on the long-term need and shared purpose of providing affordable, sustainable, effective health care for as many people as possible before this moves from being a political crisis into a humanitarian one.

It is possible to realise the upsides of our aging world. But doing so requires that we, defined globally as governments, businesses and individuals, engage on the issue. Indeed, we need to work together to reframe health as a long-term societal asset rather than a near-term cost, while simultaneously embracing a wide range of tools and technologies that help disrupt aging’s cost trajectory.

IMPACT ON GLOBAL HEALTH COSTS

The world population is aging. Today, there are 962 million people over the age of 60. By 2050, that figure stands to more than double, to more than 2 billion. Almost 400 million of those will be over the age of 80, and the over-65 population will have more than tripled.

These are seismic shifts with massive economic and social repercussions. For instance, by 2020, it’s estimated that 45 million US citizens will be providing unpaid care for another adult, with more than half doing so for more than 20 hours a week.