USHI OKUSHIMA is the oldest resident of Ogimi, the most elderly community in Japan - the country where the average age is higher than anywhere el in the world. At 108, she still takes to the floor for traditional Japane dances. Afterwards she dabs a little French perfume 猫最喜欢吃什么behind her ears and sips the local firewater. Okushima was born when Japan had only recently en off the shogun warlords. If an ageing population is on the way, she is not a bad advert for what we have in store.
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The land of the rising sun has become the land of the tting sun with staggering speed. As recently as 1984, Japan had the youngest population in the developed world, but by 2005 it had become the world's most elderly country. Soon it will become the first country where most people are over 50 years old.
This is partly becau Japane people live longest: men can expect to reach 79 and women 86. It is also partly becau the Japane have almost given up having babies: the fertility rate is just 1.2 children per woman, far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. The rest of the world is following Japan's example. In 19 countries, from
Singapore to Iceland, people have a life expectancy of about 80 years. Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now. Meanwhile, women around the world have half as many children as their mothers. And if Japan is the model, their daughters may have half as many as they do.
Homo sapiens is ageing fast, and the implications of this may overwhelm all other factors shaping the species over the coming decades - with more wrinklies than pimplies, more walking frames than bike stabilirs, more slippers and pipes than bootees and buggies, and more grey power than student power. The longevity revolution affects every country, every community and almost every houhold. It promis to restructure the economy, reshape the family, redefine politics and even rearrange the geopolitical order over the coming century.
矛盾的基本属性是The revolution has two aspects. First, we are not producing babies like we ud to. In just a generation, world fertility has halved to just 2.6 babies per woman. In most of Europe and much of east Asia, fertility is clor to one child per woman than two, way below long-
term replacement levels. The notion that the populations of places such as Brazil and India will go on expanding looks misplaced: in fact, they could soon be contracting. Meanwhile, except in a handful of AIDS-ravaged countries in Africa, people are living longer everywhere.
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This is frightening, even for rich nations. In Germany, France and Japan, there are fewer than two taxpaying workers to support each retired pensioner. In Italy, the figure is already fewer than 1.3. Some predict that the world will face a wave of "ageing recessions".
喜欢一个人的句子But could there be an upside? I believe so. Flip the coin of ageing and what do we e? In 1965, The Who sang: "Hope I die before I get old." Today, tho who survived drugs binges, fast cars, or bad marriages, are older, but often still rocking and making more u of condoms than colostomy bags. Mick Jagger (born 1943) is nobody's idea of a dependant. And Tina Turner took to the stage in London, dancing in heels and a microskirt in her 70th year.
Non-celebrities also remain active, 端午节黑板报asrtive and independent as they age. They fill library and minar halls once crammed with callow youths. They run picket lines - or marathons. Far from being a weight round society's neck, many of them look like a new human resource waiting to be tapped. Millions of the middle-class retired continue working at everything from lucrative 蛇道consultancies to teaching literacy or finally finishing that PhD. They are often more valuable than the young workers the demographers imagine are supporting them: in fact, the growing number of society's most qualified, most experienced individuals is potentially a huge demographic dividend.
In future, old people will be expected to stay in the formal economy for longer. The idea of a retirement age was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, when as chancellor of Germany he needed a starting age for paying war pensions. He cho the age of 65 becau that was typically when ex-soldiers died. But today in developed countries, and soon in poorer ones, women can expect nearly 30 years of retirement, and men 20 years.
There is a deal to be done: longer working in return for more, and more powerful, legislati
on to outlaw the ageism that blights the working lives of many in late middle age. The old will also expect a society that does not marginali them; they will consider it a right to live in homes, cities and workplaces redesigned to meet their physical requirements.
Some worry that an older workforce will be less innovative and adaptable, but there is evidence that companies with a decent proportion of older workers are more productive than tho addicted to youth. This is sometimes called the Horndal effect, after a Swedish steel mill where productivity ro by 15 per cent as the workforce got older. Age brings experience and wisdom. Think what it could mean when the Edisons and Einsteins of the future, the doctors and technicians, the artists and engineers, have 20 or 30 more years to give us.
Of cour, many older people do need healthcare, but many others are fit, competent and lf-sustaining. Across Europe, typically only one retired person in 20 lives in a care home. In the UK, of 10 million over-65s, just 300,000 live in care homes (that's about 3 per cent). So the majority of Europe's elderly remble Okushima in Japan. They are the
今年什么时候高考councillors and counllors, the social cretaries and neighbourhood wardens, the carers of other elderly people, and even the political and social campaigners and agitators - the glue that holds busy societies together. Far from impoverishing societies, says John MacInnes, a demographer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, all the evidence is that "mass longevity facilitates affluence".
The "silver market" is huge. You have only to watch US network television to e the constant advertising aimed at the elderly, from Viagra [vai'ægrə] and holidays to equipment and leisure wear. Oldies have savings and cash from lling large hous they no longer need. The money is available for purchas and investment - and ultimately for their children.
