Mature Life Features

. . . I was indecisive,

but now I’m not so sure.

Seniors Straining Economic Support

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.

Almost 90 percent of the Japanese believe this is a problem. Only one out of four Americans think this way. 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 fund is depleted. The $2.9 trillion in reserves reported in 2020 is expected to be spent by 2034 – a year earlier than previously estimated.

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 the millennium surge into the retirement age and the dwindling labor force that has Social Security support deducted from their paychecks. Simply, fewer workers will be 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 any part of it.