When I'm Sixty Four....

Remember the old Beatles song?

                        … will you still need me, will you still feed me

                        When I’m sixty four?

Well ageing is at last getting to be a recognised phenomenon right up there with climate change, although if no changes are made in that latter department, none of us will be still alive at 64 in a few generations!

One could say, slightly stupidly I suppose, that ageing is a “fact of life”. (Well, it is!).  But whilst it is a fact that has been around for a while now, and there have been many papers and books written on the subject, it has only recently become a primary topic of regular discussion in the media particularly in relation to China. It was some years ago I first heard the phrase that China was going to get old before it got rich ... but then things went ominously quiet.

I first took a serious interest in the subject of ageing a little while before I became one of the relevant statistics. HSBC did some work with an engaging professor of gerontology on the subject of demographics, Dr. Ken Dychtwald, who has been one of the pioneers in studying the subject at length – putting a commercial interpretation on what it all meant for an organisation like the Bank and the territories in which it operated.

China then, as it does now, loomed large on the horizon back then but commentaries were more often aimed at the declining fertility in and the greying populations of, Europe and, in Asia particularly, of Japan.  Fast forward to today, and recent reports on ageing in China.

A society is officially ageing, according to the UN (and to the SCMP, where I lifted the definition from), when 10% of its population is 60 or over and 7% is 65 or older. In China, from the latest available figures, those numbers are 13.59% and 9.29% respectively – whereas Hong Kong’s comparative statistic for the over 60s is 17.14%. No wonder Donald Tsang was so pleased with the statistic he trotted out to justify the government claim that Hong Kong air quality was not so bad, proving that Hong Kong people were living longer – and probably living indoors! 

In China this longevity issue creates a real strain when one considers the effects of the one child policy, which is now really beginning to show through. Situations where one male child marries and has a child of his own, so he has a family of three to feed. But his elderly parents, and his wife's elderly parents are living longer and need supporting, so one person is supporting seven. No social security safety net, no government healthcare net, and unemployment in China is rising. 

But there are problems elsewhere too. Most of the time the older ones amongst us rejoice (as long as we are in reasonable health) that we have an opportunity to live longer, but the strain it is going to put on society as we move forward is going to be almost as immense as the problem in China. Older people will be capable of, and in many cases want to, work for longer, meaning a clogging up of senior job promotion opportunities for the younger generation. If, for whatever reason, people do stop working at around 60 or 65 - and they are going to live until 90 or beyond (I believe there is a statistic that suggests 80% of every female child born in a developed country in the year 2000 will make it to 100 years old), which government is going to sort out healthcare issues that arise - and how does a worker in that environment make sufficient money to put aside as a pension?

It really is a can of worms for Asia, particularly if you care to look at the other end of the demographic lifeline.

One the one hand, you can take some comfort from the young populations that exist in Asia. In India, one out of every three people is below the age of 15. Indonesia, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam also have relatively young populations. In other words they have a "youth bulge" - to use one of the ADB's more technical terms. A bulge that has the potential to stimulate economic growth in the short term and asset creation in the longer term. But the stimulation comes from jobs, and they may no longer be so readily available.

And let's add one more ingredient to this rather depressing scenario. Asia has too many men. They cannot find wives, and if they can neither do that nor find jobs, they might just find extreme nationalism instead.

Lessons? Let us get on with doing something serious, really serious, about climate change but let's also deal with another growing problem that has the potential to create further instability.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, I'm going back to read some of the revised song titles I have just been sent that will resonate with those who remember the originals; songs that are now entitled "The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face", "I Can't See Clearly Now" and "A Whiter Shade Of Hair" 

Comments

[LDC]

Just remember the saying that getting older is a case of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.