Financial Times-
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/365d02c2-cfcb-11dd-abf9-000077b07658.html
The red flags raised by a grey world By Chris
Cook
Published: December 22 2008 02:00 | Last updated: December 22
2008 02:00
"Demography is the senior social science: churchgoers this week
will be reminded that Jesus Christ was born in the midst of a
census two millennia ago. George Magnus''s The Age of
Aging is an account of the great population transitions
currently under way around the world. Magnus is a renowned City of
London economist, now at UBS, and his new book is a guide for the
general reader on how the greying of the world will change
everything, everywhere.
Demographic cycles are immensely powerful, and move just fast
enough to cause occasional outbursts of panic. The western world
intermittently gives in to fears about population extinction and
Malthusian famine. The 1930s brought us titles such as The
Twilight of Parenthood , while the 1960s gave
us The Population Bomb . The new terror for the
west is a large, aged population: the popular literature frets that
future generations - usually Americans - are already doomed to
penury because of the rising costs of medical bills and pension
payments.
Magnus''s account avoids the hysteria that often affects this
genre. He level-headedly discusses the west''s ageing problem with
an explanation of the developing world''s demographic conundrums.
For readers who are new to the topic, some of the chapters are
useful primers on these crucial issues."
The Economist
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12847201
Demographics
Greying globe
"There is no doubt that global greying will happen. Many of the
people that will contribute to it have already been born, so short
of some catastrophe that kills off large numbers of people, or some
Viagra-fuelled leap in birth rates, population numbers and age
composition can be predicted with fair accuracy for decades ahead.
What remedies should be adopted it is much harder to say.
The pundits who have pronounced on this over the past decade or
so fall roughly into three categories: those who claim that this is
just another Malthusian scare story and can be sorted out with a
few tweaks to retirement ages and pension policies; those who
preach gloom and doom (a meltdown in asset prices, poverty in old
age, health-care rationing and even intergenerational warfare as
the young and the old slug it out for scarce resources); and those
in the middle, who crunch the numbers and try to come up with
sensible ideas to make their effect less grim.
This book falls firmly into the last category. It provides a
clear, sober and well-written analysis of the problem, both in
developed and developing countries, and runs through the options
for heading off the worst effects. The biggest part of the solution
lies in expanding the shrinking band of workers, mainly by getting
people to retire later and persuading even more women to take up
paid employment. At the same time more productivity will have to be
squeezed out of the labour force that remains. And people will have
to be persuaded to save a lot more for their old age." -- From
The Economist print edition, Dec 30th 2008.