Once upon a time, not many people grew old. Human life up until the late 19th century was routinely snuffed out in its prime. In a world where disease, famine or violence lurked around every corner, hitting the ripe old age of 45 was sometimes all a human could expect.
But in the 20th century, that began to change. In 1900, a Canadian man had a life expectancy at birth of 47 years. Today it's a little more than 80, and rising all the time. In the year 2000, the world had 180,000 people 100 years or older. In 2050, their ranks will have grown to 3.2 million. For the first time, the over-50s will outnumber those under 17.
The effects of an aging population will touch every family, every workplace, every public debate in the West over the next 50 years. As Ted Fishman's new book Shock of Gray explains, nothing will ever be the same.
Fishman, a journalist, former trader and author of China Inc., has produced a deeply reported book that traces the scale of demographic change across the globe: from Japan, mired in a demographics-driven economic slump, to the depressed industrial heartland of the United States, where growth means more care homes, to Spain, a country that bristles at immigration but grows increasingly dependent on migrant labour.
China and India are in a demographic boom that has seen hundreds of millions of young workers move from the country to the city to fuel an explosion of productivity. In Canada and Western Europe, family size has plummeted, driving fertility well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. Populations are now inching toward a slow period of decline across most of Western Europe (Canada continues to grow thanks to high immigration), and many fear there simply won't be enough workers to support the welfare-state systems built over the 20th century. The median age in most European countries, just over 40 today, will be close to 50 by 2050, Fishman writes.
As a result, rich countries are in a global competition to attract young immigrants. But it's a process that comes at some cost to the mostly poor countries that produce them.
In Ecuador, 10 to 15 per cent of the population moved abroad between 1982 and 2007, Fishman writes. Its population pyramid, once promisingly young, now resembles that of a European nation. The Philippines' largest export is now trained nurses, Fishman writes. They're in such demand, he says, that 8,000 doctors have trained as nurses to pursue more lucrative work abroad.
Some of those nurses now live in places like Rockford, Ill. Once one of the wealthiest U.S. cities, Rockford, like so many rustbelt cities, is in decline. Residents complain that their children are forced to leave town to find work after graduation. It's more true of some groups than others. The median age for non-Hispanic whites in Rockford is 41, but for non-whites it's 26. The well-paid factory jobs have disappeared, but hospitals and care homes, springing up to cater to the aging population, have taken up some of the slack. For those outside the professions, the jobs are low-skilled, pay hovers around $10 an hour and turnover is high, 80 to 100 per cent a year in the cases Fishman cites.
The trouble with an inevitably aging population is that the elderly are not well-liked or respected. Ageism is "pan-cultural," according to Fishman. Across nearly all societies, he says, the aged are stereotyped as warm but incompetent. That may soon have to change.
Fishman focuses on Sarasota, Fla., as an example of a happy future for retirees. The residents of God's Waiting Room, as he puts it, are old but vital. Typically wealthy and having arrived from elsewhere, they remake themselves in Sarasota through volunteerism and vigorous schedules of sun, sport and socializing. The city has enormous health-care capacity to care for them, and Fishman describes the industries that pop up to serve them as kind of Silicon Valley of aging innovation.
The attendants at the drug store, hard-up seniors working in retirement, are slower than the impatient customers would like. There are minor accidents in the parking lot as inattentive older drivers miscalculate their routes. The city is divided between rich and poor, between those who can buy more health care than the system can deliver and the uninsured service workers who care for them.
If demographics are destiny, Shock of Gray belongs to what will become a burgeoning genre: the non-fiction demographic horror. Barring an unlikely baby boom, it's the future.
Joe Friesen is The Globe and Mail's demographics reporter.