Older and Poorer

January 19, 2011 12:14 PM

The Global Aging Preparedness Index The GAP Index is a measure of how countries are prepared to deal with their elderly/retired - this is a recent report put together by the Center for Strategic International Studies and looks at how things stood in 2007 and looks ahead to 2040. Hint: you don't want to be old now in South Korea or old in 2040 in Spain. via cfr.org
posted by skyscraper (16 comments total)

I never thought I'd be one of the "complain about plugin or web formatting people", but REAL PLAYER? REALLY!?!?!?

Anyway, turns out Japan will be hilariously old in 30 years.
posted by lattiboy at 12:20 PM on January 19, 2011

Excuse me but I don't want to be old ANYWHERE. I don't even want to be 40.
posted by spicynuts at 12:21 PM on January 19, 2011

Well, your other option is to die young. Would that work for you?
posted by Quietgal at 12:28 PM on January 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hmmm, I didn't even notice the audio track, I just clicked around and did my own interpretation. If I had listened to that narration, I probably never would have posted this because I would have fallen asleep.
posted by skyscraper at 12:39 PM on January 19, 2011

Japan will be Rojin Z!

Also, the inuit had it right - When you can't hunt, chew leather. When you can't chew leather, go outside and freeze to death.
posted by Nanukthedog at 12:55 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

"Well, your other option is to die young. Would that work for you?"

It's my retirement plan. With any luck, I'll go out in some spectacular way that makes people say things like "the brightest flames burn fastest" and shit like that.
posted by Eideteker at 12:56 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Being 40 isn't so bad. So far it's been OHMIGODWTFNOBODYWARNEDMEABOUT -click-

Ahem. I was pissed off with the RealPlayer thing too - who uses that any more? Here's the PDF; the CSIS program page, which has many interesting links; a quick introduction to Strauss & Howe, the best-known American demographic scholars - Strauss has since died, but Howe continues to steer the GAI (and write a blog); an hour-long 1998 CSPAN interview in which they explain their theories and (in my view) display a remarkable prescience. Boomers will probably not like it, however. If it all seems like an avalanche of tables and hand-waving, you may want to bone up on the underlying concept of the population pyramids and the demographic trap.

And of course, no MeFi discussion on demographics and aging is complete without my tedious insistence that you look into the work of the Social Security Advisory Board, and its many reports...note the plaintive repetition of the 'Why action should be taken soon' title. In particular, this report on immigration trends from 2005 foreshadows the westward shift of economic growth to India and China and points out that historically the US has relied on waves of immigration to grow its economy and in recent decade, to replenish the supply of workers paying into SS. As Latin American economies have developed, however, birth rates have fallen and around 2005 Mexico's birthrate fell below the 'replacement number' of 2.1 per couple. Detailed data is available in this (highly technical) economic analysis (pdf) from the NBER.

The upshot? As developing economies grow and birthrates continue to fall, the US will have more difficulty in attracting sufficient numbers of immigrants to prop up the social security system and grow the US economy over the long term. Successive governments (more Congress than the White House, in this context) have enjoyed a small bonus insofar as many illegal immigrants pay into social security without being eligible for any benefits, and the small but significant surplus which results has actually provided a disincentive for more serious immigration reform. This source of effectively free revenue is likely to dry up within the next 10-15 years, however.
posted by anigbrowl at 1:20 PM on January 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

The countries which suffer are those that don't allow immigration to make up the shortfall, like Japan. The US also has a shortfall but makes it up with immigration, so the population level stays steadily rising at a predictable rate. It stabilizes markets and prevents bubbles and shocks. The people who decide immigration rates are basically the wizards who are molding society, kind of like weather makers, artificially controlling forces of nature.
posted by stbalbach at 1:29 PM on January 19, 2011

Curious the WWII Axis countries - Germany, Italy and Japan - are the top three oldest countries. Killing off a generation and loosing the war didn't inspire having babies.
posted by stbalbach at 1:35 PM on January 19, 2011

Important issue, terrible presentation by CSIS.

Old-age isn't a problem if they are healthy - they can work. (If they're not healthy and they're expecting to live another 40 years they will be needing voluntary euthanasia laws)

Immigration doesn't work because it doesn't change the age-pyramid, only postpones a larger demographic bulge (like a Ponzi-scheme)

Robots are better than immigrants because they don't demand political inclusion. Plus why should we make brown people from poor people change our old-people's diapers?

Anyway children are very expensive too. It's strange that this part is always missed out (I blogged on that one elsewhere: Are Children Public Goods)
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 1:59 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Immigration doesn't work because it doesn't change the age-pyramid

Not true. Currently something like 40% of all live births in the USA are to people of Latin-American decent. If you allow in people who make babies (or have babies) it solves the demographic pyramid problem. Take a look at how the age-pyramid is morphing into an age-squareblock.
posted by stbalbach at 2:12 PM on January 19, 2011

Philosopher's Beard, I appreciate that you're shooting from the hip but I think you've inadvertently loaded with blanks here.

Certainly a healthy person who can keep working rather than retire is creating an economic good and probably enjoying a better quality of life. But that will at least require adjusting our system, either to provide social security on a means-tested basis or to remove limits on amounts payable , either of which will be politically controversial. There's also a more general question of whether older workers will make it more difficult for younger entrants to the workforce, in much the same way that a political gerontocracy is coming into being in many nations.

You are correct to point out that children can be considered an expensive public good in economic terms, but one key characteristic of immigration is that the cost of raising a given adult immigrant has been borne elsewhere, so any economic profits they produce inside the US are effectively free - at least to the extent that immigrants from country X are more productive than not. The more developed the country an immigrant comes from, the greater the potential benefit to the US economy.

I am not convinced that robots' lack of political demands (for the time being, at least...) is necessarily a positive. This is in some respect the path that Japan has gone down, but my understanding is that rural depopulation is becoming a disastrous problem there, to the point that friends who work in the country have reported being paid to reside in a remote village just to keep it on social life support.
posted by anigbrowl at 2:37 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

> Excuse me but I don't want to be old ANYWHERE. I don't even want to be 40.

I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall someday die, which is not so. (Stephen Leacock)
posted by jfuller at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2011

Curious the WWII Axis countries - Germany, Italy and Japan - are the top three oldest countries. Killing off a generation and loosing the war didn't inspire having babies.

Not quite so simple as that.

Anyway, it was the damned sixties and you-know-what that did for the rates.

Japan is a more interesting case.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:46 PM on January 19, 2011

stbalbach: what happens when the immigrants get old??

anigbrowl: Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm being a bit contrarian here because I think these alternatives (old people working longer, developing robots who can pick our strawberries and assist our elderly, etc) should be considered more seriously before we opt to try to keep reproducing a social welfare system invented by Bismark to fit a 19th century demographic structure. Of course there are lots of problems with these alternatives too, but they still might be better. At least we should think about them.

On the issue of a ruthless guest-worker programme. The efficiencies comes from outsourcing child care and training to poorer countries, getting to only choose the winners, getting to send them away whenever the economy doesn't need them because they have no political rights (social welfare-saving). In a sense this is what America already does with illegal Mexican agricultural workers. Yes, it's not exactly ethical. But I was raising it as a counter to nationalist arguments for increased fertility to keep our country competitive and 'ours'.
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 3:34 AM on January 20, 2011

what happens when the immigrants get old??

We deport them, of course. Honestly, man, take some initiative.
posted by IndigoJones at 6:02 AM on January 20, 2011 [1 favorite]