For Asia’s rapidly aging populations, innovation and forward-thinking policies drive retirement security

The quickening pace of aging in Asia — a region with more than half the world’s population over 60 — has urgent implications for the region’s families, retirees, pensions and policy makers.

“Given Asia’s aging populations, retirement challenges are particularly acute in the region,” said Professor David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at London’s Cass Business School. “Solutions require urgent action from both businesses and individuals, and governments need to implement policies that support this action.”

With falling birth rates and declining death rates, Asia’s societies face the twin burdens of supporting rapidly growing elderly populations with shrinking or stagnant working-age populations. In Taiwan, for instance, it is projected that each person over 65 years of age will be supported by only 1.5 working age people by 2050, compared with 5.9 in 2015. Meanwhile, in nations like Japan, low or negative interest rates have discouraged the savings incentives needed to meet the growing financial costs of living longer.

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