May 2025

In Rapidly Aging South Korea, the Economy Is Slow in Creating “Age-Friendly” Jobs

Demographic shifts worldwide have increased the number of older workers, and many economies are facing a critical question: Are their labor markets ready to support older workers? Researchers have found that, in the United States, the surge of older workers has gone hand–in-hand with an increase in the number of “age-friendly jobs” – roles with working conditions more suitable for aging employees, such as placing fewer physical demands or offering greater scheduling flexibility. Yet it remains unclear whether comparable trends...

The vision of younger-seniors-based elderly care in rural China: based on population aging predictions from 2020 to 2050

By Haojian Dou, Cheng Wang, Guishan Cheng, Xiaoyan Lei & Shuang Xu  Population aging is an irreversible and challenging global trend. Factors that worsen it in rural areas include the outflow of young adults, lack of medical resources, and uneven economic development. Based on projections of rural population aging trends in China from 2020 to 2050, this article explores the growth trends and spatial heterogeneity of elderly populations in rural areas. The results indicate that from 2020 to 2050, the...

Germany struggles to fix its pension system

Germany's baby boomers are retiring. Those born between 1955 and 1969, when the birth rate was at an all-time high, are also living longer. The workforce is not growing at the same rate. So who will pay the elderly's pensions? A considerable chunk of the federal budget goes into propping up the statuary pension system and the new Labor Minister, Bärbel Bas from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), has reiterated an idea of how to partially fix that. The pension system in Germany, established in 1889,...

Türkiye’s birth rate falls further, deepening alarm over below-replacement fertility

The number of live births in Türkiye fell to 937,000 in 2024, as the average number of children per woman declined to 1.48—well below the replacement level of 2.1, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported on Tuesday. The total fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her reproductive lifetime, defined as the 15–49 age group. Compared with the EU average fertility rate of 1.38, Türkiye ranked 9th among member states and candidate countries....

As Thailand markets itself as retirement haven, its tourism sector struggles to find young workers it desperately needs

Thailand is accelerating toward an aged society, much like Japan, with major economic implications looming. As of 2023, over 20% of Thailand’s population is aged 60 or older, officially classifying the country as an “aged society.” The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) projects that by 2037, more than 30% of Thais will be elderly, significantly reducing the working-age population. At the same time, Thailand’s total fertility rate has plummeted to 1.08 births per woman in 2023, far below...

China. Eld­erly patients to get improved clin­ical care

China plans to build more clin­ics spe­cial­iz­ing in geri­at­rics at major hos­pit­als and strengthen their cap­ab­il­it­ies as part of broader efforts to address the needs of a rap­idly aging soci­ety, accord­ing to a recent guideline released by the National Health Com­mis­sion. The updated guideline on the estab­lish­ment and man­age­ment of clin­ics for eld­erly patients, issued on Thursday, replaces an earlier ver­sion from 2019. It man­dates that hos­pit­als in the upper two tiers of the coun­try’s three-tier hos­pital sys­tem estab­lish such clin­ics...

April 2025

US budget: Senior care will shrink even as the country’s older population grows.

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services delivers a devastating blow to the very foundation of aging services in America. By breaking apart the coordination and delivery of programs under the Older Americans Act, the administration is jeopardizing the health, independence and dignity of millions of older adults and their caregivers. At the core of this proposal is the dismantling of the Administration for Community Living, the agency that has effectively administered the Older...

UK pension system is at a tipping point

The UK faces a pensions time bomb that could detonate within a generation. Unlike all good suspense movies, there is not going to be a cutting of the red or blue wire in the final seconds of a digital countdown; solutions are complex, multi-faceted and wide reaching. For decades, the UK pension system has been regarded as a stable safety net, ensuring workers can retire with dignity. But beneath this illusion of security lies a crisis in the making. The combined pressures of...

Why ageing well takes a village

For people to age well, they need systems, sectors and policies that create the conditions to support good health and economic well-being. One element of this involves creating policies that ensure people are not forced to stop working simply because they have reached a certain age. Policy-makers, employers and the public sector have collaborated on legislation that enables older people to keep working if they wish. Like everything in life, ageing is not something we do alone. That’s even more true when...

The New Baby Boom: How the White House is looking to jumpstart the nation’s birth rate

The Trump administration is reportedly fielding ideas for how to increase the declining U.S. birth rate, a longtime priority of White House figures like Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk. Since 1990 the U.S. total fertility rate has declined from 2.1 births per woman – enough to fully replace the current population – to 1.62 births per woman in 2023, below the replacement level, according to a March report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, part of a larger decline in birth rates in wealthy peer countries. Experts point...