International Comparisons
Pathways to Global Aging: Opportunities for Practitioners and Other Gerontologists to Access the World
Speech
April 2004
Nancy A.
LeaMond
Director, AARP Global Aging Program
2004 Joint Conference of the American Society on Aging and the
National Council on the Aging
San Francisco, CA
Good morning and thank you for inviting me to join the conversation about the opportunities of global aging. I feel right at home with this issue, because one of our main goals at AARP is to create and participate in a constructive discussion about the aging of the world’s population and how these changes will create new opportunities and challenges across our societies.
AARP has reached out internationally since its inception in 1958, serving as a premier international source of information and advocacy on issues affecting aging populations. Through the AARP Global Aging Program, we host a number of activities in the area of global aging and work with governmental and nongovernmental organizations to exchange ideas and establish "best practices" in addressing issues such as pensions, labor markets, age discrimination, health care, long-term care, and advocacy. I encourage each of you to join us in these efforts, because I know we share a common goal to better the situation for aging people where we live and around the world.
Above all, AARP seeks to be a long-term partner in the global aging debate. To that end, we will continue what we call “international fact-finding trips” to other countries, where we meet with representatives of government, labor, nongovernmental and business sectors and discuss best approaches to accommodating and leveraging the aging populations. We will also continue our participation in international symposia like this, and sponsorship of strategic forums. This past year we hosted international forums on long-term care, pension reform, and prescription drugs inviting many voices to debate these pretty challenging themes.
We take the mission of facilitating the dialogue on global aging very seriously. AARP serves as a convener for the constructive discussion about aging, but not only among our peer organizations and the NGO community. We believe that this dialogue needs to involve all kinds of audiences including policy makers, government figures, gerontologists, academics and the business sector. Our major undertaking this year will be an AARP-hosted major international conference in November in London called “Reinventing Retirement, “ which as the name suggests, will be a thought provoking affair aimed at confronting some of the great issues facing or countries as they grow older.
Not too long ago, the definition of an optimist was a 60 year-old person who took out a 30-year home mortgage. Today, I think you’d call that person a realist. Across the developed world, we are living longer, and the size of the aging population is increasing dramatically in relation to other age groups. Just imagine that worldwide, the number of people aged 65 to 84 is expected to grow threefold by the year 2050. This new aging world presents us with challenges not to be ignored, but also with important opportunities to our economies, our politics and our work.
Countries are, for the most part, dealing with the implications of their aging societies discretely, with little regard for how another phenomenon - globalization - has in fact trans-nationalized aging. Germany tangles with under-funded public and corporate pensions, Great Britain with health care reform, Italy with low birthrates and being the “oldest” country in the world, and Japan with the implications of having the longest life expectancy. But as our economies are today interrelated on an unprecedented global scale, the world has a profound stake in the outcomes of these so-called domestic debates and every other debate that involves the stability and well-being of the major industrialized nations, which represent the majority of the world’s productive and purchasing power.
Aging in an interconnected world knows no borders. Those of us who think about these issues also must begin to think beyond borders. I know it’s not fashionable for an American to do so, but let me suggest we take a multilateral approach to aging. The process of globalization, with advances in transportation and technology and deep trade linkages and increasing cross-border flows of private capital, means that ideas and economic problems in one country can spill over into others, making international consultation necessary.
Consultation, of course, begins at home. For too long the global aging dialogue took place primarily within the aging community. Policymakers need to find better ways to exchange information, best practices, and research. We need more opportunities to bring together experts in all fields of aging. Consultation between a broad range of business, labor, media, environmental, educational, health care, civil society and other sectors is crucial in creating a society for all ages.
These broad consultations ought to be transnational. There is much our countries can teach and learn from one another, from hard experience and the occasional success story. The OECD, for example, suggests there are lessons to be learned from the massive transformation of the US Veterans Health Administration in the 1990’s—from hospital care to ambulatory care and from curative treatment to preventive—that helped push per patient expenditures down by more than 25% while improving quality and effectiveness.
To illustrate the transnational nature of aging, let’s consider the example of the US Social Security system, our social insurance system which has, over the years, greatly contributed to the reduction of poverty. By the time the 76 million American baby boomers begin to retire in the next few years, there will be two or fewer workers for each Social Security beneficiary. Longer life spans, early retirement, increasing political pressures to curb immigration, and low birth rates mean fewer workers will be supporting more retirees for much longer periods than ever before.
An increasing and influential number of economists and pension experts are urging that some or all of the trust fund be invested in the stock market. Although, here at AARP, we generally favor investing the trust funds to yield higher returns, we oppose the concept of transferring the risks associated with equity investments to the individual through what we call “carve-outs” or individual accounts. Interestingly, however, the idea gained credence from the initially positive response to Chile’s experiment with privatization in the 1980’s, the results of which have since been found to be overstated. However, the Chilean example is just another example that ideas on aging knows no borders.
For context, the US is not in dire straits regarding our public pensions. Greater challenges face some other G-8 nations. By 2010, Japan could have fewer than two people at work for every retiree. With a rapidly shrinking work force, Japan's once vaunted savings rate may shrink by half in order to meet its pension obligations. This could erode the basis for Japan's great productivity and growth. And just imagine the situation in Spain and Italy, where the ratio of pensioners to workers may soon sink even below one-to-one, meaning that more people will be collecting benefits than paying taxes.
A stable international consensus on the problem, its consequences, and policy prescriptions can help shape the agenda for domestic politics. There should be, at minimum, the development of a permanent consultative mechanism for reforms addressing the aging challenges through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or another international organization. Regular consultation would represent a common commitment to providing stability and security to the global economy that each nation increasingly relies on.
With consultative status as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) with the UN Economic and Social Council, AARP has been involved in the UN’s initiatives on aging for almost 10 years. The United Nations has done noteworthy work towards the creation of a society for all ages via its Program on Aging, its two UN sponsored World Assemblies on Aging, and through the initiatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote active and healthy aging. But the truth is that the UN and the WHO do not consider aging a priority and we continue to feel that their work on moving the aging agenda forward has been insufficient. Further research and disaggregated data collection is needed and more cooperation with NGOs and governments is essential. Additionally, more leadership is needed from the UN to urge governments to take seriously the recommendations made in the areas affecting older persons, and to implement adequate national policies and reforms pertaining to their aging populations. There’s still much more that can be done.
So, what can we do, as practitioners and experts in the field? We should all be monitoring developments in different countries to determine the best practices in tackling some of the challenges associated with aging populations. For example, Europe is much farther ahead on the aging curve and many countries have long ago started addressing this issue. Through our international meetings and the various forums we hosted in the past year, we found many relevant lessons for the US. Some of the examples include looking at how the Netherlands set up its long-term care system or how the UK is introducing incentives for increasing the number of older people in the workforce. AARP’s international forum on prescription drug policy explored how Europe, Australia and Canada are balancing rising costs of their drug benefit programs and provided valuable lessons for our policymakers.
On the other hand, we think the US can contribute with its age discrimination expertise. After all, we have had relevant laws here for over 35 years, whereas Europe is just now starting to introduce them. As a matter of fact, AARP’s public interest lawyers have been advising European governments and organizations on this important legislation.
AARP also offers many opportunities to those who would like to get involved. Your research and ideas can be submitted for consideration for posting on our international website and quarterly newsletter, which feature many leading voices on global aging. Our goal is to serve as an international resource of the most relevant and timely information on aging populations worldwide.
Most importantly, however, we must all help change the mindsets in our countries to one that embraces aging as an opportunity. If this is the new mindset through which government and workplace policy is crafted, we have done a great service to our countries, and I believe, to the world. AARP is happy to collaborate with each of you on materials and research to help this important task to continue.
Thank you.