In many countries, the proportion of older people is steadily increasing. Does this trend make positive or negative effects to the society?




It is inevitable that the aging has been a strong trend in many parts of the world for many years. Part of reasons would be the rapid development of some industries like healthcare, medicines or even insurance and etc… and the others might include government policies, culture changes, and social moral shifts. Some countries, especially the developed ones, has stepped into the aging society which has a fairly large proportion of older people in the overall population structure, while more developing countries are moving to this direction at different paces. As a result of which, the debate on the impacts of aging population to a society, in general, never ends.

A certain proportion of social study expertise insists that aging has more positive effects than negative, to a society. They claims that more older people help to form a more mature, steady social environments, as they believe, supported from previous population studies, that older people have more respects to the public communities, and are much less aggressive when conflicts arise. Secondly, this trend can significantly stimulate the development of some relevant industries like healthcare and medicines, and perfect the government pension system and commercial insurance system, as the demand on those products increases in line with the aging trend.

While there are also many other professionals criticizing the positive effects from aging to a society might be over-estimated and the negative impacts could be substantial. This is particularly true to some developing countries, where sound pension and healthcare insurance systems have not been established. As aging adds much more pressures on these systems than societies which are dominated by young people. Secondly, large proportion of older people means relatively small proportion of young and mid-aged people, who are the primary contributors to the industry and overall economy. Thus lacking of working force is always a key issue for aging society. Last but not least, within a family unit, mid-generations have much more pressures financially and emotionally, from the older and younger generations in the family, which is particularly true in some countries where one child policy are deployed, like China.

The debate never ends and there is no universally dominating opinion over the other. I believe that the population proportion and the economy status should be somewhat balanced, in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the shortages from society becoming aging. More specific, when a society is inevitably becoming an aging one, we need to ensure the related industries and policies are in place to support the transition.