Mercy Global Concern - 2003

Towards a Society for All Ages

Briefing paper Number 1: November 2003

Facts:
In 2002 there were 629 million people in the world who are 60+ or (1 person in every 10)
By 2025 this number will be 1 in every 5 and
By 2050 it will be 1 in every three persons 60+
and most of these will live in developing countries.

"Over the next few decades, older persons will form an increasingly large and important presence in communities and societies everywhere. And yet, until recently, little attention has been paid to how we can best use the skills of older persons in development.

The Second World Assembly held in Madrid (2002) called for a fundamental shift in how we think about ageing and older persons. The Madrid Plan moved policy issues on ageing out of the narrow confines of the social welfare agenda, and into the mainstream of development policy debate. It put forward how we can adjust to an ageing world and build a society for all ages.

Everyone of us can help build bridges between generations by embracing the skills of older persons, whether in community or family affairs, agriculture or urban entrepreneurship, education, technology or the arts. The challenge before us is to bring the invaluable attributes of older persons out of obscurity and into step with other instruments of development - including the work to develop the Millennium Development Goals, our blueprint for building a better world in the 21st century."

Kofi Annan - Secretary General, United Nations, New York.

Reflections on the Agequake

(prepared by the NGO committee on Ageing)

Perspectives on ageing is coloured by many factors. How we assess life's transitions - whether we applaud maturity as an achievement, or focus on physical decline - depends largely on whether our cultures and social systems label such changes as positive or negative. Ageing is universal, but the meaningfulness of growing old is a variable, impacted by demographics, national economic resources, and society's expectations -or lack thereof -for the elderly.

Population ageing is unique in human history. It can nourish human society, replenishing its roots, making it grow in many ways, all of them healthy. Or it can blight our lives, drying up desperately needed resources, leaving no fertile soil for human endeavor.

Governments seem to be more comfortable with immediate crisis; foresightedness is not one of their attributes! Unless dealt with constructively, the ageing of the world's populations will keep much of the world's population mired in poverty, destabilizing nations, making the world a more dangerous pace for everyone. Governments must address this situation NOW.

In the developing world, the elderly are being forced to head extended households because of the HIV/AIDs pandemic where many are now the guardians of their children's children. By 2015, the number of people in the 65+ group, will double in developed countries and triple in developing countries. For example, by 2015 the number of persons 65+ will represent 60% of the population in Latin America, 47% in China, 52% in India and 48% in Africa - making this a development issue, since these countries are not starting from a privileged position.

The Feminization of Poverty

Recognizing the importance of ageing in the developing world is half the battle, for the issue is as much gender as geography. Women represent more than half of the world's poor, and more than half of the world's elderly. For if money talks, as the saying goes, then women have often been left speechless, and older women absolutely mute. When it comes to depreciation, older women get written off very quickly. Our 'book value' tends to drop precipitously with age.

The young need to be taught that ageing is a continuum on the human journey, not a stop and go trip between discrete points that creates different types of human beings. Unfortunately, in the 20th century the word 'generation' has insinuated itself as yet another dividing line in society, and stands with gender, class, race and ethnicity as a seam that we need to tear open.

The fate of older men and women is inevitably linked to the development process. We must deal with poverty and ageing together. Barring enormous and unforeseen increases in the productivity and efficiency of our economies, we will either harness the skills of the elderly alongside the strength of the young, or older people - especially women and the very old - will face a terrible future. And the burden of caring for greater numbers with fewer resources will drag everyone down.

The United Nations' International Year of Older Persons represents a milestone on the road to change ....

"The U.N., having coped with the problem of displaced persons, has finally begun to turn its attention to the plight of misplaced person. I am referring to the misplacing of entire categories of people, especially elders, under the heading of helpless, pitiful, dependent, non- contributory wards of society - people with needs who are no longer capable of deeds. For too long, elders have been out of sight and out of mind. The International Year of Older Persons can return them to the neighborhood of our awareness and move then back into the human community.

It is a kind of urban renewal in which we could all take pride.

........which asks us all to see past the stereotypes...

Definitions have the power to determine reality. Policy is based on perception. Looking at older people as 'victims' victimizes them; it is more than a label, it is libel and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most efforts that have been made to 'help' older people have been based on a welfare model that views ageing as entailing only illness, weakness, poverty, isolation, desolation and depression. Old people are seen as a burden, something less than full citizens, with a circumscribed role in life. This 'modern' view of the later years, to some extent, functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. We view the elderly this way; they adopt this view of themselves, and they become society's stereotypes.

In creating 'A Society for All Ages', the theme of interdependence and universality is critical. We indulge not in special pleading, but rather plead that governments consider the specialness of all people.

..... rethink the concept of age....

Contrary to what people think, the human growing season does not cease when the bloom of youth is gone. When it comes to the issue of ageing, unfortunately, too many people still only see one-way signs. For them, ageing deals with not much more than the end.

The comedian George Burns once complained that many people, as soon as they reach 65, begin to take smaller steps, and bend over. In reality the arthritis is in their head, and the inflexibility is to be found not in their joints but in their ideas and consciousness. We cannot speak about life expectancy without also considering what we expect from life.
Concentrating on ageing only in terms of a lengthened chronology is not what is needed. We need a new awareness that ability not chronology is the measure of how much people can contribute to society.

Too may people in our youth-oriented societies view ageing as an unmitigated process of decline. They think that old age is necessarily a story of illness, poverty, isolation, desolation and depression. Such attitudes lead people to accept a circumscribed role in later life as inevitable.