Mature Life Features

. . .to the 2nd floor theater

at 2 p.m. Monday for

peticures and doggone good service

by a team of professional petcare-ist groomers .

= = = = =

Seniors Straining Economic Support

The globe is heading toward a challenging population problem that could develop into 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. 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 oldsters 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.

This rapidly aging population is creating a mounting set of unprecedented issues, 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 the $2.9 trillion in Social Security reserves reported in 2020 is expected to be depleted by 2034. When that happens, benefits payments could be slashed by as much as 25 percent. This is happening because fewer workers are supporting a growing number of Social Security recipients.

= = = = =