January 2023

Chipping away at the mystery of immortality: The race to cheat death as populations age in Asia

As Asia ages faster than any other region in the world, the race is on to find ways to slow down the process. There are now 630 million people aged 60 years and above in Asia Pacific, representing 60 per cent of the world's older population. By 2050, that number is projected to increase to 1.3 billion. The research in longevity has advanced to the point of several potential interventions mostly in animal models that might work in humans, said Prof...

Robots Are Taking Over Jobs, but Don’t Panic Yet

One might easily think that robots are causing significant disruption in the labor market by replacing human workers, especially when considering examples like chatbots serving as more efficient customer service representatives or computer programs handling package tracking and transportation without human intervention. According to a study by Eric Dahlin, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University, there is no need to fear an imminent robot takeover of jobs. Dahlin’s research suggests that the rate at which robots are replacing humans...

December 2022

South Korea. Population Declines for 36th Month due to Low Births

The country's population declined for three consecutive years due to a combination of plunging birth rate, society’s accelerated aging and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data from Statistics Korea on Wednesday, there were 20-thousand-658 newborns in October, down zero-point-four percent from a year earlier. The on-year gain was the lowest for October since the agency began compiling related data in 1981. The tally for newborns has seen an on-year decline for 83 straight months since December 2015. The number of deaths in...

A long-term illness crisis is threatening the UK economy

Along with sky-high inflation and energy costs, a Brexit-related trade tailspin and a recession in progress, the U.K. economy is being hammered by record numbers of workers reporting long-term sickness. The Office for National Statistics reported that between June and August 2022, around 2.5 million people cited long-term sickness as the main reason for economic inactivity, an increase of around half a million since 2019. The number of “economically inactive” people — those neither working nor looking for a job —...

UK. Early retirement and our ageing population are causing labour shortages, says Lords report

Economic inactivity has increased by 565,000 people since the start of the pandemic - a stark reversal of what was happening before 2020. The biggest contributor to this change has been an increase in early retirement, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee concluded today in its report “Where have all the workers gone?” Background Earlier retirement is the biggest of four factors that have made it harder to fill jobs. Increasing sickness; changes in the structure of migration; and an...

The rise of age-friendly jobs and what employers need to know

Ageism in the workplace is a growing concern. A recent Washington Post story on the futility of age-discrimination lawsuits highlighted two troubling data points: In a recent survey conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons, 61% of workers 45 and older reported seeing or experiencing age discrimination. And a study by the Urban Institute and ProPublica found that 56% of workers 50 or older were pushed out of longtime jobs before they chose to retire. This economic and ethical...

Fintech Is Coming For Benefits: Best Practices For Employers

Fintech is increasingly touching every aspect of our lives, from retail to banking to blockchain, and now it’s coming for employee benefits. But how could fintech innovation change employer benefits? Employee benefits are essentially a payment or subsidy to employees—with some strings attached. They can apply this payment to specific areas, such as health, student loan debt, 401(k) plans, transportation and more. Benefits are among the biggest drivers of why employees choose companies—and stay. Yet benefits plans remain, in many instances,...

Germany. Scholz wants to limit early retirement to weather German labour crisis

While Germany's chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for policies to discourage people from taking early retirement, the FDP is looking to Sweden for inspiration, considering the economic benefits of a more flexible retirement policy and how it may help plug the country’s labour shortage. Scholz calls for cutbacks in early retirements Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz has made an appeal to people over the age of 60, calling on them to delay their retirement. The SPD politician said that pension-age people delaying...

Intergenerational Solidarity

By Alan Gutterman Aging is a natural progression of the life cycle and society will always have persons of different ages who need to learn to live alongside one another. One of the most consistent themes in the debate regarding the realization of the human rights of older persons is the need to strengthen “intergenerational solidarity” between and among all levels of families, communities and nations in order to achieve social cohesion and a society for all ages and build...

November 2022

The countries with the oldest populations

Declining birth rates, rising divorce rates and increasing life expectancy are among the many factors changing demographics around the world. In fact, many countries are experiencing an overall aging population. According to a 2019 World Bank study, the following countries have the oldest populations. Bulgaria Just over 21% of Bulgarians are aged 65 and over, which contributes both to the general aging of the population and to one of the fastest depopulation in all of Europe. As a result of the...