Mature Life Features

. . .is a mantra that has survived through the ages,

so I will never say it again.

Seniors Straining Economic Support

The globe is heading toward a challenging population problem that could develop into a crisis, or even a calamity. We’re aging.

There were slightly more than 900 million people – about 12 percent — around the world aged 60 years and older in 2015. This number is expected to increase to 1.4 billion by 2030, an increase of more than 16 percent. By 2050, one out of five people – 2.1 billion scattered all over the globe — will be 60 or older.

Since most of these people will be out of the work force, they will have to have fashioned their own retirement plans or be supported by somebody. Most people in most countries think the government should take care of its elderly. This socialism brush could be wider than anticipated and affect how the nations of the world are governed in the near future.

This rapidly aging population is creating an unprecedented set of problems, including a rapidly spreading and more diverse set of diseases, increased spending of time and money on health and long-term care, labor shortages, and steadily rising inflation chewing away at old-age income.

Adding calluses to the problem is the fact that Social Security payments will probably be lowered when the surplus in the trust funds is depleted. The $2.9 trillion in reserves reported in 2020 is expected to be spent by in 2034. When that happens, benefits payments will probably be slashed by about 25 percent if adjustments aren’t made in the meantime. This is happening because of the millennial surge into retirement age and the dwindling labor force that has Social Security support deducted from their paychecks.

Simply, fewer workers are paying for more Social Security recipients. While every elected official in Washington and every economist in the country knows the problem exists, no one has made any moves to fix all or part of it.

Not only are populations around the world aging, they’re having fewer kids. That means a diminishing number of workers burdened by a growing number of seniors.