UN Forced to Concede: World Aging, Not Overpopulated

Elderly Easy Targets

On February 26, Secretary General Kofi Annan released a report on the abuse of the elderly in advance of a conference in Madrid later this month on issues facing the aging. It mentioned practices like ostracism, which occurs in some societies when elderly women are used as scapegoats for natural disasters, epidemics or other catastrophes. “Women have been ostracized, tortured, maimed or even killed if they failed to flee the community,” the report read.

It also asserted that while physical, financial, emotional and sexual abuse of older people is “grossly underreported” generally, studies done in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Britain and Canada show that the problem is found in richer as well as poorer nations.

Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute responded to the study saying his group has reported this kind of information for years.

“[This] is the work of Joseph Chamie, head of the UN Population Division,” Ruse explained. “Chamie has been sounding an alarm for almost four years that the problem in the world is not overpopulation, but a demographic bust due to population control. Chamie is the official statistician at the UN and is frequently at odds with the more ideological UNFPA and others.”


This article, which originally appeared in the New York Times, courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.

Fears of Instability

Joseph Chamie, an American demographer who directs the United Nations population division says “We will see this trend accelerating in the 21st century.” Mr. Chamie introduced figures that show aging as pervasive – not just confined to rich countries – and likely to have profound implications on economies in all regions.

If there were fears of instability generated by the idea of large numbers of unemployed young people becoming ready recruits for militancy or criminal activities, an older population raises other concerns.

As the United States has already discovered, pressures mount on health care systems, health insurance plans and social security as well as private pensions. In poorer countries, some of these safety nets do not now exist. Sri Lanka, for example, has a rapidly aging population and free health care – but no social security and few pension plans outside government service.

Potential Support Ratio

The United Nations found that in richer countries, people over 60 now account for one-fifth of the population. Predictions indicate that the proportion will reach one-third by 2050. In poorer countries, only 8 percent of the population is over 60 now, but that is expected to rise to 20 percent by 2050.

With more people living longer and families getting smaller in most countries, the fastest-growing age group in the world is people over 80, the United Nations found. That group is growing at 3.8 percent annually.

United Nations demographers are riveted on a statistic they call the “potential support ratio”: the number of people 15 to 64 who are available as workers to sustain the retirees. In 1950, the ratio was 12 to 1; in 2000, it was 9 to 1. By 2050, there may be only four working-age people for every person over 65 worldwide.

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