January 2024
18Jan

France joins list of countries where birth rates are declining

France’s population is older than ever, and its citizens are having fewer children. Just 678,000 babies were born in the country last year, the lowest number since 1946. The decline is primarily due to women having fewer children or none at all, according to Ined, France’s National Institute of Demographic Studies. The nation’s population still increased slightly last year, thanks to migration and a record high life expectancy of 85.7. These trends are not unique to France — births are...

January 18, 2024
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18Jan

China’s Population Drops by 2 Million in 2023 Due to Record Low Birth Rate

China has long seen the United States as its main geopolitical rival. But the Chinese government is facing a new threat – this one from within: a precipitous decline in the country’s birth rate, leading to a rapidly aging – and shrinking – population. China’s population fell by a staggering 2.08 million people in 2023 to 1.409 billion, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Its population had declined by 850,000 in 2022, which had been the country’s first year-over-year decline...

January 18, 2024
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16Jan

China Unveils Extensive ‘Silver Economy’ Plan to Adapt to Aging Population

China’s is rapidly getting grayer, and amid unsuccessful attempts to boost languishing birth rates, the country has now unveiled plans to reorient a significant part of its massive economy around its aging population. China’s State Council on Monday unveiled a series of measures to promote the “silver economy,” calling on both state-owned and private enterprises to better cater to the elderly and announcing plans to develop 10 industrial parks and increase public and private investments and innovation in elderly products...

January 16, 2024
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15Jan

Expanding the conversation about aging

Many issues facing older adults intersect with other social inequalities, but experts often fail to keep the experiences of historically underserved communities in mind when discussing aging. Since 2020, the MIT AgeLab’s Aging and Equity Speaker Series has sought to bring together researchers, advocates, and practitioners who aim to understand how aging-related issues affect a broad array of communities. “We think it’s important to offer a platform at MIT that amplifies the work of researchers who are thinking about issues like...

January 15, 2024
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12Jan

Pension Systems (Un)Sustainability and Fiscal Constraints: A Comparative Analysis

By Michael Wickens  Using an overlapping generations model, two new indicators of public pension system sustainability are proposed: the pension space, which measures the capacity to pay for pension expenditures out of labour taxation, and the pension space exhaustion probability reflecting demographic uncertainties. These measures reveal that the pension spaces of advanced economies are strikingly different. Most nations have little scope to further finance pensions out of labour income  taxation over the next thirty years. There is no one-size-fits-all solution....

January 12, 2024
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10Jan

U.S. centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years

The number of Americans ages 100 and older is projected to more than quadruple over the next three decades, from an estimated 101,000 in 2024 to about 422,000 in 2054, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. Centenarians currently make up just 0.03% of the overall U.S. population, and they are expected to reach 0.1% in 2054. The number of centenarians in the United States has steadily ticked up since 1950, when the Census Bureau estimates there were just...

January 10, 2024
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09Jan

The EU Loses About a Million Workers Per Year Due to Aging. Migration Official Urges Legal Options

The European Union’s top official for migration said Monday that member states will have to confront tough policy challenges — even in the current election year – to cope with the continent’s aging population. Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner, said there was a pressing need to shift away from illegal migration and find more legitimate alternatives. “For demographic reasons, the population of working age in the EU will decrease by 1 million per year. It is decreasing by 1 million per...

January 9, 2024
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04Jan

Japan retirement trends: job-seeking seniors double in 10 years

The number of people 65 and older looking for work in Japan has more than doubled over the past decade, government employment center data shows, creating the challenge of matching them with the right jobs in a shrinking labor pool. A Hello Work employment center in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district has a counter just for senior citizens. Some need work to supplement their income, but others just want to stay active. "I want to work until I'm 70," said a 66-year-old man who was there to fill out paperwork...

January 4, 2024
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04Jan

Female-Specific Aging Trajectories Remain Understudied

Most model organisms don’t match human sex specificity The use of model organisms, such as worms, fruit flies, and mice, has helped researchers to understand many aging processes. However, it is also partly to blame for the lack of data on how pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menopause impact aging-related diseases. Animal research is based on the premise that those organisms and humans share essential physiological characteristics. While true in many cases, there are tremendous differences between the physiology of model organisms and...

January 4, 2024
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04Jan

China’s population: Beijing urged to build digitally inclusive society, as it seeks insights into technical skills of its elderly

China is seeking to gain more insights into the digital literacy of its elderly population as it attempts to find ways to better accommodate its rapidly ageing demographic in an increasingly intelligent society. New questions on smartphone usage for people aged 60 and above were added to a survey on population changes and the labour force conducted at the end of 2022, and published recently by the National Bureau of Statistics in the 2023 China Population and Employment Statistical Yearbook. They...

January 4, 2024
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