The surge of older people

 Grid News - By the middle of this century, the number of people aged 65 and over around the world will total more than 1.6 billion people, up from around 760 million in 2021. In other words, there will be more than twice as many elderly people a generation from now. “This is not a short-term challenge like famine or drought or war, but it is a long-predicted, natural change in the structure of our societies,” John W. Rowe, an expert on aging at Columbia University and a past president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, told Grid.

And it is a change with far-reaching consequences. “The fundamental institutions of our societies — and by that I mean work, retirement, education, healthcare, housing, transport — were not designed to support the population age distribution of our future society,” Rowe explained. “They need to be re-engineered in order to adapt.”