By AARP

As the world enters the UN’s Decade of Healthy Ageing, amid global covid-19 vaccination efforts, the need to increase support for the wellbeing of older adults has never been so clear. Older people comprise a growing share of the global population. This trend will persist over the coming decades, and not just in high-income countries. By 2050 an estimated 80% of older adults will be living in low- and middle-income countries. Yet disparities for older adults are ubiquitous, with fundamental gaps in the ability of global health systems to protect and provide care for them. Even in the highest-performing systems, older adults still face barriers accessing care. Marginalization based on features like class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and ability further exacerbate unequal access. The covid-19 crisis has publicly exposed vulnerabilities in health systems’ capacity to serve older people while intensifying disparities.

Given the renewed focus on older adults kindled by these failures during the pandemic, there is a unique opportunity to reimagine existing paradigms and develop innovative approaches to promote healthy aging. Another driving force comes from efforts like the Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-30), established by the UN in December 2020 with the goal of improving “the lives of older people, their families, and the communities in which they live”.

Seizing on this moment, The Aging Readiness and Competitiveness (ARC) initiative 3.0— developed by Economist Impact (formerly The Economist Intelligence Unit) and AARP—has explored challenges in healthy aging and solutions developed to address them.1 First launched in 2017, ARC aims to provoke a rethinking of older adults’ roles in communities and economies and prompt innovative action from governments, firms, civil society and other stakeholders to enable more independent, engaged and productive older populations. Building on the previous work under the health and wellness pillar of the ARC initiative—one of four categories—this report centers on key challenges and policy trends around health and wellness identified in those previous studies, taking a pragmatic stance toward improving the future of healthy aging

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