Longer life expectancy is an enduring worldwide trend that poses an increasingly acute problem in terms of retirement
18/04/2011
According to the UN, 11% of the world's population was aged over 60 in 2007; by 2050, that figure is likely to have doubled to 22%. There is no mystery about the main causes: a falling fertility rate at one end of the spectrum, and longer life expectancyat the other.
All the evidence suggests that this is a long-term effect. It raises questions over the balance of the economic and social relationships between generations, and poses an increasingly acute problem in terms of retirement.
In emerging countries, the economic issues are particularly hot: as the Director-General of the WHO said in 2002: "While developed countries grew affluent before they became old, developing countries are growing old before they get affluent".
The effort of maintaining and extending pension systems in these countries poses considerable difficulties.
The situation in developed countries is better, but is no less beset by significant tensions within national pension systems. With a diminishing working population to pay contributions into the system for an increasing number of pensioners, these systems are doomed to descend into the red unless reformed. At the same time, the rapid growth seen in developed countries during the 30-year post-war boom has given way to more modest growth rates, and there is no way of knowing whether they will recover at any time in the future.
Confronted by these developments, the affluent countries of the world began to introduce pension system reforms as early as the 1990s, with the aim of rebalancing the accounts within a foreseeable timeframe on the basis of feasible demographic and economic scenarios.
