Older and Healthier

From the Telegraph: "The negative effects of an aging population may have been exaggerated because people are staying healthier for longer, according to a new study. ... The two factors tend to balance each other out, the researchers found, suggesting that Governments may have overestimated the future costs of demographic changes. For instance, standard measures assume that over 65s are likely to need carers, whereas healthy elderly people are often themselves able to look after an even older relative, the report's authors said. ... If we apply new measures of aging that take into account increasing life-spans and declining disability rates, then many populations are aging slower compared to what is predicted using conventional measures based purely on chronological age. ... Their calculations show that in the United Kingdom, for example, while the old age dependency ratio is increasing, the disability ratio is remaining constant. What that means, according to the authors, is that [although] the British population is getting older, it is also likely to be getting healthier, and these two effects offset one another." Any "negative effects" of greater human longevity are entirely imaginary, or the product of broken regulatory systems that should be scrapped. Longer lives produced by modern medical technology are an unambiguously good thing.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/7991505/Costs-of-aging-population-have-been-overestimated.html

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