The Study Of Global Aging

Introduction

The ageing population is one of the contemporary challenges faced by the world. Many factors have contributed to exacerbating these issues. Such as the increased longevity due to improvement in the medical science, decline in the fertility rate and many others that have caused to increase the share of elders to rise throughout the world. No matter which factor has caused the population ageing to emerge in different parts of the world, the findings are not very optimistic as there are significant implications to this phenomenon. These include economic aspects such as consumption, employment, economic growth, etc. This essay shall discuss the issue of global ageing in different dimensions.

Discussion

Research studies suggest that the age structure of the population has been changing. The population is expanding rapidly, and the share of older people in the population has increased. According to David (2016), the proportion of people who are 60 or older shall increase throughout the world. However, there are many implications for this population’s ageing. The demographic shift in the world shall create further problems for people around the world. Problems such as labour force participation shall be reduced, health expenditures may likely increase, and ultimately, the burden on the economy will increase. Thus, to handle this issue, certain institutional innovations, technological adaptabilities, and behavioural adjustments are required so that the effects of an ageing population can be mitigated. Research studies suggest that the population of the world has increased as in 1950 it was 2.5 billion. However, today, it is more than 7 billion (David, 2016).

When discussing an ageing population, a country such as Japan cannot be ignored. The country has a large proportion of the ageing population, as 30% of the population is above 60 plus. Research studies suggest that there are three stages in which a demographic transition takes place. Firstly, fertility and mortality rates are high, and there is almost no population growth. Secondly, fertility starts declining, and as a result, the population rate also drops but remains positive.

The aging population in a country causes a change in its economic dynamics. For instance, changes occur as the population ages due to their different requirements for consumption and savings. Their needs for employment and the behaviours they demonstrate also vary. These changes in the indicators ultimately contribute to the change in the national income.

The author believes that to investigate the issue of ageing around the world, three different stages are required to be discussed as the study of global ageing encompasses them. The first stage includes the broad question about the issue of ageing as a whole. This helps the writer to obtain the global patterns. The second stage focuses on ageing within a country, where various factors, such as the policies, social structures, experiences of older people, and cultural practices of a particular location, are studied. The third stage is the cross-national comparative global ageing research.

This type of research combines the earlier two types of studies as well. This type of study takes into consideration every factor in more detail. The conceptual grounding, problem statement, and research questions are required for this research as well. The author further describes the importance of comparative research, emphasizing the case study analysis. In this analysis, the social and economic context is taken into consideration. The author suggests a continuous study of cases to understand the issue. The author discusses examples of different cultures, such as South Korea, US and Bangladesh, and Germany, etc. The author further describes the types of cross-national research. These include four, where the nation is studied as an object, context, unit of analysis and on a transnational level. The examination of cases belonging to different cultures helped the author gain a better grasp of the issue.

Moreover, to conduct a research study, it is crucial to identify a unit of analysis. Not only this but the boundaries must also be ascertained to make comparisons. Not only this, but at times, the location and culture might also be used for comparative analysis. An important thing to consider in this regard is that the definition must be accounted for before taking any such phenomenon as a unit of analysis. Further, the next issue after the determination of the unit of analysis is to answer the question of how the information shall be obtained. It is known as the unit of observation. After this, the research questions are clarified so that they are based on the theme of the project. Another critical element in this area is the respect among the participants for each other, so the research must be ethically responsible.

Conclusions

To sum, the challenges offered by these steps also provide opportunities to study different cultures to ethically research and accurately find out the reasons that are causing aging population further the acceptance by different cultures to allow to study such global concerns is also mandatory. Such type of research provides better insight to the researcher so that he might come out with the real results and affirms the statement of Seymour Martin that a person who only possesses the knowledge about one country actually knows nothing.

Works Cited

Bloom, David E., and Dara Lee Luca. “The global demography of aging: facts, explanations, future.” Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging. Vol. 1. North-Holland, 2016. 3-56.

Bloom, David E., David Canning, and Günther Fink. “Implications of population aging for economic growth.” Oxford review of economic policy 26.4 (2010): 583-612.

Clough, Beverley, and Jonathan Herring. “Introduction.” Ageing, Gender and Family Law. Routledge, 2018. 1-11.