ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609300113
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
IF YOU'VE followed the election-year talk about Medicare and Social Security, you know that the graying of America has public-policy implications.
But the phenomenon isn't confined to the United States, nor is its impact confined to the financial prospects of a couple of government programs.
The trend is global, a recent New York Times story points out, and is occurring in the Third World (albeit for somewhat different reasons) as well as in industrialized nations. The percentage of the world's population 85 or older, though small (currently about 1 percent), is nevertheless expected by the year 2010 to be double what it was in 1960. Those 65 or older are expected to comprise nearly 7 percent of the world's population by 2010, up from less than 6 percent in 1980. The worldwide median age, about 23 in 1970, is expected to top 30 by 2020.
Locally, this is familiar territory. The Roanoke metro area's median age is one of America's oldest outside Florida. The New River Valley, though its population is relatively young because of its many university students, has made attracting retirees a big part of its economic-development strategy.
The fiscal impact of fewer workers per retirees on programs like Social Security and Medicare, while a major question raised by aging populations, is hardly the only one. Pressure by a growing and politically interested retired population could worsen America's already skewed habit of spending more on programs for the elderly than on investments in the young. An older population could mean the national savings rate, already too low, will decline further. So might the pace of technological innovation and adaptability to it.
Still, viewing all this as an unmitigated problem would be a mite peculiar. The aging of the world's population is, after all, a result of welcome developments.
In the developed nations, it's a consequence of longer life spans and of World War II's end, which sparked a bumper-crop boom of babies 50 years ago whose aging today accounts for much of the demographic change. In poorer countries, aging populations are a result of health gains - especially in infant and childhood mortality, whose decline has fostered smaller families and lower birth-rates that could be a precondition for economic takeoff.
Nor is generational warfare inevitable. Notwithstanding the recent defeat of a proposed Roanoke County school-bond issue, the Roanoke Valley's oldish electorate has on balance a respectable record of support for public education. Nor are New River development strategists wrong in thinking that retirees can contribute more to a community than they take out - not only economically but also in such areas as volunteer work and quality-of-life contributions.
The graying of the world's population in itself spells neither boon nor doom. That will be determined by how well the world adapts to the change, how wisely the world responds to it.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB