Aging
Surviving Catastrophe: The Elderly in Cambodia
For a period that began in the early 1970s
and lasted more than two decades, the Cambodian people were victims in turn
of bloody civil war, genocide and starvation, and renewed civil war. During
the reign of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.5 to 2
million people—more than 20 percent of the population—lost their lives.
Today, Cambodians endure extreme poverty and one of the highest HIV
infection rates in Asia. Many of the people who died during civil strife or
because of HIV infection were the spouses, sons, and daughters of the
current elderly population. Thus, in addition to having endured extreme
trauma, these older people may now lack core family support. However,
relatively little systematic data exist on the social and economic situation
or the health of Cambodia’s elderly. Population Council demographer Zachary
Zimmer and his collaborators conducted the 2004 Survey of Elderly in
Cambodia. This study is the first comprehensive examination of the lives of
the Cambodian elderly based on a widely representative sample.
Demography
Bengali Perceptions of Adult Mortality Trends Distorted
Nostalgia for the “good old days,” a familiar sentiment in the developed
world, may be common in the developing world as well. Recent research in
Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal has revealed that,
despite well-documented progress in health and an acknowledged
improvement in child mortality rates, many rural Bengalis firmly believe
that adult health and survival have declined in recent years.
Demographers Sajeda Amin, of the Population Council, and Alaka Malwade
Basu, of Cornell University, encountered this attitude while conducting
interviews on women’s and men’s motivations for reproduction. They were
intrigued and decided to further explore this surprising worldview.
Aging
Making Public Pensions Sustainable
Mortality and
fertility declines inevitably lead to increases in the proportion of the
elderly within populations. Demographers expect population aging to become
a widespread phenomenon in all world regions, raising concerns about the
sustainability of public pension systems, such as the U.S. Social Security
system. Failure to address these concerns could have adverse economic
effects on a national and international scale. Population Council
demographer John Bongaarts recently examined the situation in Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States
and offered policy options to make pension systems sustainable.
Aging
How Long Will We Live? Demographers Refine Estimates
Estimates of current life expectancy at birth are routinely provided by
national and international statistical agencies and are important to
policymakers because they measure progress in lowering a country’s overall
level of mortality. The United Nations Population Division publishes
estimates of life expectancy for all countries in the world, ranging from
a low of 37 years in Sierra Leone to a high of 80 years in Japan for the
period 1995–2000. These numbers may be overestimated by up to a few years
in contemporary countries with high life expectancy, say two demographers
who have analyzed past and future trends in mortality. In a paper
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
John Bongaarts, vice president and director of the Population Council’s
Policy Research Division, and Griffith Feeney, an independent consultant,
question the accuracy of underlying calculations that generate life
expectancy figures, identify a distortion in the calculations, and provide
a formula to amend the figures.
2003
Aging
Trends in Disability and Functioning Among Older Adults in the United
States and Taiwan
Rapid and widespread
population aging is one of the foremost demographic phenomena of the
twenty-first century in both the developed and developing world. A
fundamental questions regarding the increase in survival is whether or not
the extra years of life are being spent in good or bad health. Recent
Council research in the United States and Taiwan explores this question.
The researchers conclude that Taiwan does not appear to have been
experiencing the same improvement in late-life health as has been
occurring in the United States.
Reference Work
New Population Encyclopedia Offers Thorough Review, Reflects Expanded
Scope of Field
The newly published Encyclopedia of Population provides a
comprehensive appraisal of the field of population studies. This reference
work was badly needed as the last encyclopedia of population was published
more than two decades ago in 1982. “In the 1980s, population issues seemed
to many people to connote little else but rapid population growth and
measures to curtail it,” write the editors Paul Demeny and Geoffrey
McNicoll, in their preface. “Today population growth is one concern among
many.”
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