The positive side of the older populations to come.

• Author: Day, Lincoln H.

The huge change in the age structure that would come with a slowing or halting of population growth need not result in older people becoming an economically crippling burden. In fact, the kinds of policies that could stimulate this change are the same ones that would produce a more ecologically viable and vital society as a whole.

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Birth and death rates in countries of largely European origin, as well as in Japan, are now at their lowest levels in history. If this situation continues, these countries will inevitably have much older populations and will experience declines in total numbers. That prospect has generated a host of fears: of labor shortages and wage inflation, unsustainable calls on the public purse, weakened national defenses, shortages of intellect, declines in national "vigor," even race suicide and the disappearance of European culture.

The greatest of these fears relate to the anticipated additional financial costs--for pensions, health care, and custodial services--associated with older age structures, and whether there will be enough younger people earning the money and paying the taxes to defray them. But, while providing comprehensive health and pension programs appropriate to older age structures could be expected to require some readjustment in both perspective and social policy (regarding health care or taxation, for instance), in none of these countries are the financial barriers to such provision impossibly high. Whether this provision is actually forthcoming is another matter, but it is a matter not of money but of social priorities.

Is an aging population something we realistically need to be concerned about? Well, yes, it is--but not as much as most people seem to think, and not for the reasons commonly cited.

Let's begin with two pertinent truths: first, no population can increase indefinitely. There are limits: to resources, to physical space, to what might be termed "social space." Though these limits can be extended by changing the way we behave and use our environment, there will come a point, even with the most judicious behavior and use of the environment, beyond which population increases will inevitably result in declines in the quality of life, and ultimately in life itself.

Second, the changing age structures and imminent numerical declines we are now seeing in some countries stem from two great human achievements: the ability to control one's childbearing to the point where the goal of "every child a wanted child" is now a tangible possibility, and the ability to postpone death to the point where the great majority in these countries now die at what not so long ago was considered a highly advanced age.

Thus, older age structures and imminent numerical declines are to be welcomed, not deplored. They indicate that we now have the ability to adjust human numbers to the realities of limited resources in a rational and humane manner, no longer having it cruelly forced upon us by way of higher death rates.

What Are Those Europeans Really Worried About?

But it is not just the existence of limits that argues for welcoming these demographic changes; it is also the alternatives--for these are all either manifestly undesirable...