Politicians of all persuasions are becoming increasingly concerned about the financial implications of an aging population, where life expectancy continues to increase year on year.
An interesting piece of work has recently been published by Kaaare Christensen of the University of Southern Denmark.
He expounds the view that a high percentage of children born post 2000, are likely to live until they reach the age of 100, relatively free from the ageing process. With fairly low birth rates in the developed countries, such as France, Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK, there will be substantial challenges for health and social care systems.
Alex Mair of the British Geriatrics Society concurs, stressing that serious institutional problems will arise, which will have to be tackled. Foremost amongst these will be the amount and cost of healthcare needed for an acceptable quality of life.
By way of illustration, some 300,000 fragility fractures occur every year in the UK, and the incidence is rising year on year as the population ages. This requires the services of an army of highly trained specialist medical staff to cope with the special circumstances that arise when dealing with the elderly.
To start with, there are GPs, supported by community nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists, secondary care clinicians, including geriatricians and psycho-geriatricians, to mention just a few of the services that will have to be strengthened and developed.
The costs involved will be an enormous drain on the Exchequer, and without doubt, a complete rethink will have to be undertaken as to the appropriate age for retirement. Certainly the present policy of slowly increasing the age when pensions can be drawn will not support the demands of the elderly.
Then of course, the longer people live, the greater the pension bill becomes. This again will mean that people will have to work many more years to be able to provide revenue to meet the costs of the bulk of the population living to reach three figures.
When I started on my journey through life some 75 years ago, the rule of thumb for life expectancy was three score years and ten as outlined in the Good Book. People over the ago of 70 were seen as old, 80, very old and 90 almost unheard of let alone the very occasional centenarian.
The social implications of what must happen are enormous, but inevitable. A completely new timetable for career span will have to be constructed to take account of a retirement age of, say, 75 for both sexes.
* Russell Luckock is chairman of pressworks firm AE Harris
