More and more alive: Keys to aging well

Aiguemarine Cie, France, November 2016

We are living in a global society where the aging population is constantly growing in numbers and in age. There is no historical reference to an increasingly long life in good health to be shared among four, five, or even six generations; a society rich in progress, but which has not done away with extreme poverty, or violence, and which is destroying the environments indispensable to future generations.

Released from compulsory work, retirees in good health until later than 80 years old account for increasingly large shares of Western populations, with those 60 years old and older being 605 million in 2000 and projected to be 2 billion in 2050. During same period the number of those more than 80 are projected to increase fourfold to nearly 400 million (WHO figures).

Low and middle income countries are expected to experience the fastest and most significant demographic trends. In France, it took 100 years for the population share older than 65 to rise from 7 to 14%. In countries like Brazil and China, this happened in only 25 years.

This document, part of the work undertaken by Pierre Caro, is a call to retirees and older persons to remain actors in their ethical and responsible ways of life and living conditions.

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