Ageing Population and the effects

In the UK it is predicted that in 2050 the population of the people aged 65 and over will have almost doubled. Also the government have predicted that the predicted average male life expectancy at 65 will rise to 21.0 in 2030 and 21.7 by 2050. Christchurch in Dorset is known to be the “pensioners” capital of England, one in three of them being retirement age. This is because pensioners usually migrate to coastal areas or by the sea side. 



United Kingdom's population pyramid for 2050.



The impacts of this are things such as healthcare, the higher the population of older people the more cost needed for the healthcare with things that are wrong with them, therefore the health costs are compressed into the later year of lives.  This process is called compression of morbidity. Not only this but other impacts that this has is on retired people’s pensions. Because of more of the population being retired it requires more money to be paid into pensions, as they may not be enough younger people to afford to pay for it. There has, however been some suggestions made to prevent this from happening such as; pensioners become poorer , taxes and national insurance contributions go up, rate that people save for retirement increases or the average age of retirement go up. A final impact of all this is that more housing is required for older people. They need specialist homes such as bungalows where access to other rooms isn’t a problem. Other things that will be in higher demand will be nursing homes; a further knock onto this is the need for more people to work within these homes.

In England it is said that councils will struggle with ageing population, at the moment 9 billion pound is spent a year on council care. It is predicted that by 2026 it will double.

Less child deaths, less overpopulation

It is said that 500,000 kids die every year from a diarrhoeal disease; however this has been unnoticed by the public. But if something could be done about this and more children’s lives could be saved than it could result in less overpopulation. The result of overpopulation is the need of more money, the more money needed the harder it is to spread the resources of sanitation, food and clothes. It is believed that most parents in less economically developed countries only want small families, but the problem arises when the mother isn’t confident that all of her children will make it, so she has to have twice as many. But when she knows that her first few children will survive she can invest more money in her family. A new organisation has recently been put together to spread our vaccines to the very poorest countries in the world. This organisation is called GAVI (the global alliance for vaccines and immunisation). Since 1980 measles has gone down by a staggering 93 per cent!

Check out gavi's support group on facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/GAVIAlliance?v=wall#!/GAVIAlliance