U.N. to discuss boom in elderly population

MADRID, Spain -- The predictions are almost cataclysmic: In 50 years, if trends continue, one of every three people will be older than 60. Those 2 billion seniors would outnumber the world's youths.

Even before that, gains in longevity could bring a worldwide economic crisis, experts warn. With the population's proportion of taxpaying workers shrinking, national budgets could be overwhelmed in trying to provide retirement and health benefits for the elderly.

"By the mid-2020s, virtually the entire developed world will be one big Argentina unless some serious reforms are made," said Paul Hewitt of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

So, on Monday, representatives from 160 countries and international organizations begin a five-day United Nations conference in Madrid to grapple with the challenges posed by the graying of humanity.

The United Nations says older populations will significantly change patterns of "savings, investment and consumption, labor markets, pensions, taxation ... health care, family composition and living arrangements, housing and migration."

In the developing world, the pace of aging is faster than in developed countries, giving the poorest societies less time to cope. The ramifications could be serious as the elderly become an additional burden to the traditional scourges of poverty and disease.

Delegates at the Second World Assembly on Aging -- the first was 20 years ago in Vienna, Austria -- will try to agree on an action plan for addressing a host of aging-related issues: retirement age flexibility; living with dependency; elderly benefits; technology and the aging process; death matters such as euthanasia.

The meeting's chairman, Spanish Labor and Social Affairs Minister Juan Carlos Aparicio, said Wednesday that "60 to 70 percent" of the plan had already been agreed on in preparatory negotiations.

Nevertheless, hundreds of non-governmental organizations -- from the American Association of Retired Persons to the Red Cross of Mongolia -- are holding their own meetings over the weekend to push for firm commitments.

"We want to ensure there will be clear and comprehensive solutions, not just a magnificent closing ceremony and pledges that two or three years later everybody has forgotten," said Hector Maravall of the Spanish trade union CCOO.

One of the key issues is aging in developing countries. Now that family planning programs have lowered birth rates, populations are getting older faster than societies can cope, the United Nations says. The burden is expected to fall on already struggling families.

"In Africa, because of the AIDS epidemic, it is often the grandparents who are taking care of children," said Eduardo Rodriguez, president of the Spanish Confederation of Elderly Organizations and co-chairman of the meeting.