Mainstreaming Ageing

Indicators to Monitor Sustainable Progress and Policies

Asghar Zaidi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351920957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gerontology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA), adopted at the Second World Assembly on Ageing, is the first international agreement that specifically recognises the potential of older people to contribute to the development of their societies. In monitoring its implementation two key approaches are evident: a qualitative bottom-up participatory approach and an approach that uses quantitative indicators to monitor sustainable progress and policies. With the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, playing a pivotal role in the monitoring of the implementation process, one of its key tasks has been to develop a list of 'indicators of achievement'. This book contains extended and revised versions of policy briefs and background papers that support the implementation monitoring process. The analyses included in these chapters make concrete suggestions towards quantitative indicators, with the aim of assisting national governments in mainstreaming ageing in their policies. The contributors provide an overview of the current situation with respect to population ageing and its consequences and also provide projections for the future. The book also includes the final list of quantitative indicators that arose out of consultations with international experts, related to the four main topics addressed: demography, income and wealth, labour market participation, and social protection and financial sustainability.

Part I

Changing Demographic Contexts and Policy Challenges

Trends and Priorities of Ageing Policies in the UN-European Region

Bernd Marin, Asghar Zaidi

I Demographic Trends and Coping Capacity

Compared to other world regions, the region under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Europe is undoubtedly the most diversified and most heterogeneous one. It currently spans over 56 countries in three continents – Europe, North America, and Asia – reflecting a great variety in political and socio-economic contexts as well as in demographic trends and in coping capacities of the countries involved to implement policies designed to address the challenges of population ageing.

The critical question is what are the most important specificities of demographic transition processes of the UN-European region, their pace and social impact? Does rapid ageing not take place everywhere on the globe, in developed and developing countries alike, apart from the well known observation that rich countries age after having become rich while poor countries will age before they become rich. The UN-European region presents us with an example of both these scenarios, since it not only comprises very rich countries of north-western Europe and North America but also poorer Eastern and South-eastern European, Central Asian and Caucasian countries. The extent and nature of the challenge is such that even countries among the richest nations are seemingly unable to build sufficient capacity and political will to cope with the most acute ageing challenges, and this is despite the fact that demographic challenges they face have been well known for decades and most countries do have the resources, including the knowledge and tools available to solve them. It is alarming that, as with the issues of mass unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, the absence of mainstreaming ageing policy and providing sustainable old-age security system as well as health care and long term care for the elderly have become serious concerns and many countries have as yet to come up with a clear and convincing perspective on possible solutions to tackle these issues. This is quite remarkable for a region, whose core continent claims a special ‘European Social Model’ as a major element of its collective identity.

Great heterogeneity and diversity with respect to longevity, fertility, migration as well as timing and velocity of population developments are found elsewhere, but rarely in such close geographical proximity. In no other continent in the World, if the 1990s rates of social change are projected into the future, the countries comprising the region would need, for instance, an estimated 63 years (EU-25) to up to 200 years to catch up with the OECD median in levels of infant mortality (European Centre, 1993: 307-309). Where else one finds a geographical proximity of a mere two-hour flight but with demographic development gaps range from decades to more than a century?

Demographic differences, with a low to non-existent tendency to converge,, and sometimes even a growing greater divergence, are reflected in various demographic measures, such as life expectancy at birth and at later ages, disability-free life expectancy and mortality rates – the latter especially with respect to differences in number of deaths from traffic accidents and violence (Chesnais, 2003). For instance, the relationship between already achieved levels of life expectancy and additional gains in life expectancy turned around from negative to positive, and thus shifting from convergence during the 1960s to growing divergence in the 1990s to 2000s. Although the post-1989 rise in death rates in many but not all transition countries may have been temporary, the gap between some Central and Eastern European countries and neighbouring ones was significantly increased and does not seem likely to close again in the foreseeable future. Baltic people, for instance, gained up to 6.8 years additional lifetime during the last decade only, whereas life expectancy is decreasing for men in Belarus and Ukraine, and Russia remains 20 years behind Sweden and Switzerland.

Within the region, which is expected to grow to 1.189 billion people by 2025, we find both a population decline in such countries as Italy, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine and Romania, as well as an increase in others, such as in rapidly growing Turkey, Albania, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Israel. More general and persistent population growth takes place in North America – the US and Canada – which not only have perpetually high levels of immigration, but also a significantly younger population than Europe (3.6 years lower that the median age in Europe and 6.5 years lower than in Japan), as well as higher fertility rates. The populations of all Eastern European and the former Soviet countries grew over the past 50 years, but a good majority of them will experience shrinking population between 2000 and 2025 – this region is projected to see its total population shrink by about 23.5 million (World Bank, 2007). The largest decline will be observed in Russia (17.3 million), followed closely by Ukraine (11.8 million). In contrast, Turkey (22.3 million) and Central Asian Republics (the most notable being Uzbekistan: 9.3 million, Tajikistan: 2.6 million, Turkmenistan: 1.6 million) will experience gains in population during the same period.

This highlights the greater diversity in population development within the region, with first natural and later overall decline in some but not all countries, but also compared to expanding North America. This raises potential of a higher internal and external immigration within neighbouring countries and surrounding regions, which needs to be managed so as not to further enhance the challenges of shrinking population in some of these countries. The population growth in North America is parallel to that of neighbouring Mexico and the hinterland of South America, representing a stark contrast to population decline in Southern Europe vis-à-vis the population multiplication in neighbouring North Africa. Similarly, population growth in the Central Asian Republics and Turkey brings the population size in these countries closer than ever to that of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which face a sharp decline.

There clearly is a demographic marginalization in a global context, but even more so of Europe itself than of the overall UN-European region. The UN-European region is shrinking from 34% of the world population in 1950 to the expected 17% in 2050. The continent of Europe’s global population share alone is shrinking from 22% in 1950 to 12% today, to 7% in 2050. In 2000, for the first time in the history, the South-eastern hinterland of Europe’s 25 closest neighbours from North Africa to Western Central Asia, whose total population was less than half the population size of Europe in 1950, has now reversed this trend. By 2050, their population is expected to reach 1.26 billion (2.4 billion including Africa), or three times the population of EU-25, thus changing the demographic relationship of EU-25 to its 25 closest neighbours by 1:6 to 1:12 within a century.

Uneven population growth between Europe and its Southern neighbours could be illustrated by many vivid examples. When the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Najib Machfus was born (in 1911), Cairo had a third of the population of Vienna; when he died (in 2006), it had 15 million people and was 10 times more populated than Vienna. Egypt, until 1990s smaller than Italy, will soon be bigger than the most populated European country (Turkey, which will overtake Germany in the near future), and Cairo alone will have more inhabitants than Beijing, or more than Paris, London and Berlin together. Pakistan, which was smaller than the UK until 1960s, may reach the population size of the US within one or two more generations. And nobody will remember Belgium as of the same population size as the Philippines (currently 76 million, but soon to have 127 million inhabitants), Iraq being smaller than Denmark, or Saudi Arabia smaller than Ireland. Uganda, in 1950 having the same population size as Switzerland, will have more inhabitants than Russia by 2050. (Coleman, 2007). Clearly, in terms of sheer population size, Europe is rapidly losing out in comparison to the rest of the world.

The low fertility experienced over the last decade in the UN-European region leads to the fact that today 83% of all new born children are born in Africa and Asia and only 8% in North America, Europe and Oceania (outside the region) together, and less than the 9% in Latin America. Whether and how fast the European or Western pattern of fertility restrictions will diffuse around the globe will be most important. Whereas the one- to two child family has been diffused to China, southern India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Columbia and other Latin American and even to Muslim countries, such as Algeria, Tunisia or Iran (having the same birth rate as the USA), this has not (yet) been the case in many parts of the neighbouring Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including Israel (as a country within the UN-European region). But the level of fertility decline, which took 200 years in Europe, may be speeded up to only 20 years in the neighbouring countries in development. While the fertility rate in the Maghreb 1960 was that of Europe around 1750, the Maghreb in 1995 corresponded to Europe 1900 – 1950; and only a decade later, in 2005, several Maghreb countries had the same birth rates as France.

Advancing the ‘Second Demographic Transition’ (characterized by a. strong increase of cohabitation at the expense of marriage, and by single parenthood and childbearing outside marriage) to more universal and irreversible trend in itself does not empirically cause low birth rates, as STD countries themselves are highly heterogeneous, with some being close to replacement levels. China, currently having fertility rates close to the lowest-lows in Europe, shows nevertheless that for several decades a population ‘overhang growth’ of more than all European inhabitants since the times of Mao Tse Tung is compatible with a one child policy and low fertility, leading to accelerated ageing from 2015 onwards. As against US-American population growth, low fertility in many European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, has become so drastic that these countries would totally disappear by around 2250 without massive immigration and turn-around in birth rates (cf. Chesnais and Chastelande, 2002). After a continuous decline in fertility, Russia as well as many countries of the former Soviet Union (in particular Ukraine and Georgia) and Western Balkans (in particular Croatia) will also be facing shrinking population and their challenges to mitigate its consequences for economic growth and public expenditures are much greater as they are still going through reforms to develop their political systems and institutions.

It can be argued that neither higher immigration rates, nor return to higher birth rates, present themselves as a ‘solution’ to challenges of population ageing faced by Europe. The shrinking population and its consequences require a package of policy reforms covering adjustments in labour and capital markets, health and education sectors, migration and social security systems, or else the region runs the risk of becoming demographically unsustainable. Replacement migration alone cannot be trusted to offer a panacea to prevent population ageing or mitigate negative consequences on economic growth and public expenditures of population ageing. As shown by UNDP (2001), an implausible and socially unacceptable – and unmanageable – level of immigration will be required, and it is a known phenomenon that immigration is easy to start but hard to stop and most difficult to manage in its daily routines. According to World Bank calculations (Holzmann and Palmer, 2006), the net immigration ‘required’ to keep labour force levels for EU-27 constant till 2050 (at currently rather low levels in Europe compared to North America) would have to be about twice as high as today. Correspondingly, the gross immigration, including non-active migrants, dependent children and elderly, as well as returning and circulating migrants, would have to be about between 4.5 and 9.5 times, respectively, higher than projected by the EU Commission for the decades to come – between 3.71 and 7.52 million per year as against 850.000 projected and 1.3 million today – and far above the all-time high in 1992 of 2.7 million gross immigration. According to model calculations, the economic benefits of an immigration rate of 1.3 million people annually correspond to an increase of only 7% in the labour force participation rate (Economic Policy Committee / ECFIN, 2006). An alternative view is adopted by the World Bank (2007) in which the migration within the region (from younger to ageing societies) could ease some pressure of shrinking population, although caution is necessary since this might not be possible politically and a good management of such migration will be essential.

There seem to be at least four core problems related to the immigration issues in the UN-European region. First, the predominance of non-discretionary immigration, i.e. migratory flows over which the receiving country has no or very little control only, such as asylum seeking or family reunification as against labour migration; second, high stocks (several million both in the US and Europe) and flows (several hundred thousand both in the US and Europe annually) of illegal migrants, who then have no formal contribution towards the development of the economic system; third, failure of social integration of immigrants, especially in Europe, and its social consequences; and fourth, a conspicuous gap between immigration realities and the selfconception as well as prevailing mentality of European countries as supposedly a ‘non-immigration’ continent, compared to the US and Canada.

Europe and North America now share the phenomenon that most migration into the UN-European region (up to 90% in France and Austria, for instance) is no longer taking place for work reasons but family and humanitarian reasons. Family reunification with dependents, relatives, spouses, marriage, university studies, as well as asylum seeking have become the main routes of entry even into the US and many countries of north-western Europe. The very few, but important, exceptions are Canada, Switzerland, the UK and Portugal, which resemble Australia in that the labour force migration remains the main purpose of immigration. Widespread endogamy (i.e. the practice of marrying within a social group) and marriage migration in ethnic minority populations, such as, for instance, Turkish and Moroccan people into the Netherlands has become the single most important route of entry in some countries for some populations. Failure of socio-economic and cultural integration is being re-enforced by chain-migration and in-marriage patterns. Asylum seeking has become a process of mass population movement (Coleman, 2005), with 6.6 million asylum claims into Europe since the 1980s, which, while mostly rejected, made most claimants seem to stay nonetheless. If migration within the region is to become a reality, some useful lessons from past migration practices will need to be drawn. If ‘labour’ migration is to be pursued effectively, these patterns of migration also offer good outcomes in terms of social integration.

One more consequence of massive immigration is that 106 million out of 175 million people in the world living in a country other than their birthplace are in the UN-European region, 56 mi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: CHANGING DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXTS AND POLICY CHALLENGES
• PART II: INCOME AND WEALTH
• PART III: QUALITY OF LIFE
• PART IV: LABOUR MARKET AND EARLY RETIREMENT
• PART V: SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL SECURITY
• PART VI: ECONOMIC GROWTH, FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
• APPENDICES: MAINSTREAMING AGEING - INDICATORS TO MONITOR IMPLEMENTATION (MA:IMI)
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS