Introduction
The aging population is one the contemporary challenges faced by the world. There are man factors that had contributed to exacerbating this 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 aging to emerge in different parts of the world, the findings are not much optimistic as there are significant implication to this phenomenon. These include economic aspects such as consumption, employment, and economic growth, etc. This essay shall discuss the issue of global aging on 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 been increased. According to David (2016), the proportion of people who are at the of 60 or more than that shall increase throughout the world. However, there are much implication of this population aging. The demographic shift in the world shall create further problems for people around the world. The problems such as labor force participation shall be reduced and the health expenditure may likely to increase, and ultimately the burden on the economy shall increase. Thus to handle this issue the certain institutional innovations, technological adaptabilities, and behavioral adjustments are required so that the effects of an aging population could 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 ageing population the country such as Japan cannot be ignored. The country has a large proportion of the aging population as 30% of the population is above 60 plus. Research studies suggest that there are three stages in which a demographic transition took place. Firstly, where the fertility and the mortality rate are high, and there is almost no population growth. Secondly, fertility starts declining and as a result population rate also drops but remains positive.
The aging population in a country causes to change the economic dynamics of a country. For instance, the changes occur as the population ages due to their different requirements for consumption and savings further their needs of employment and the behaviors they demonstrate also vary. These changes in the indicators ultimately contribute to the change in the national income.
The author opinionates that to investigate the issue of aging around the world three different stages are required to be discussed as the study of global aging encompasses them. The first stage includes the broad question about the issue of aging as a whole. This helps the writer to obtain the global patterns. The second stage focuses on the aging within a country where various factors such as the policies, social structures, experiences of the older people and the cultural practices of a particular location are being studied. The third stage is the cross-national comparative global aging 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 the research questions are required in this research as well. The author further describes the importance of comparative research where he emphasizes on the on case study analysis. In this analysis, the social and the economic context is taken into consideration. The author suggests a continuous study of cases to understand the issue. The author discusses the examples of different cultures such as South Korea, US and Bangladesh, and Germany, etc. The autor further describes about the types of cross-national research. These include four where the nation is studied as a object, context, unit of analysis and on a transnational level. The examination of the cases belonging to different cultures helped the author to have a grasp over 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, at times the location and culture might also be used for comparative analysis, but an important thing to consider in this regard is that the definition must be accounted 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 that 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 by the theme of the project. Another critical element in this area is the respect among the participants for each other so that 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 in actual 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.
