In these days, there is a lotof hue and
cry about the aging population and its related issues in
the world. The UN Population Division has stated that there
will be two elderly persons for every child in the world
by 2050. It means that the people who are aged 60 and above
will be approximately 32% of the total population of the
world by 2050 as compared to 20% at present. This problem
is getting more acute in the Asian countries such as China,
Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines
and India. As the population in these Asian countries is
growing older day by day, Elderly Dependency Ratio (EDR)
is rising against Youth Dependency Ratio (YDR). The parity
between them is going to be even tougher to achieve in
the coming years due to sharp decline in the fertility
rate, birth rate and death rate, especially in the case
of China and Korea. According to an estimate, by 2020,
in China, there will be approximately 400 million people
aged 60 and above, and 100 million people aged 80 and above.
By 2050, one-third of the 1.4 billion Chinese population
will be 60 and above. Whereas, in the case of Korea, the
number of people aged 65 and more rose to 29.5 mn in 2005
from that in the year 2000 as compared to the population
growth of 2.3% during the same period. It is estimated
that by 2050, one-third of its total population will be
aged 65 or more. As far as India is concerned, the problem
is not that acute at present. But in the future, it will
be when the EDR will go up from 13.0% in 2000 to 32.8%
in 2050 as compared to YDR which will come down from 58.5%
to 30.4% by that time. Hence, many employers in Asian nations
are already projecting the need to train and retain the
older workforce in the near future so as to avoid labor
shortage problems. Moreover, they are looking at the aged
workforce as the experienced workforce who will be more
committed to work.
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