DEVELOPMENT REPORT
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April 22, 2002: UN Report on Aging
By Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
The number of people over age sixty is expected to increase two times during the next fifty years. A new United
Nations population study says the percentage of older people in the world is rising quickly.
Today, one of every ten people is over age sixty. By the middle of the next century, one
in five people in the world will be sixty years old or older. That will be almost two-
thousand-million people. This means there will be more older people in the world than
children. Experts say many developing countries do not have the social services to help
increasing numbers of older people.
Joseph Chamie (SHAM-ee) heads the U-N office on population. He says that the
average length of time a person is expected to live increased by about twenty years
during the last half of the twentieth century.
The current life expectancy is sixty-six years. The oldest of the old people are also living longer. Mister Chamie
says that twelve percent of older people are eighty years old or older.
Mister Chamie says the world’s population is getting older because death rates and birth rates have decreased.
He says the reduction in these rates has been a great success. The U-N study also found that women still live
longer than men in all but two countries
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Pakistan and Bangladesh. For every one-hundred women in the world
age sixty or over, there are only eighty-one men.
The results of the study were discussed at the U-N Second World Assembly on Aging in Madrid, Spain, earlier
this month. During the meeting, delegates from one-hundred-sixty countries agreed on a plan to improve the lives
of old people. The measure deals with such issues as education, work, retirement guarantees, housing, health care
and the rights of older women.
U-N officials believe the aging of the world’s population will require a change in
development aid. They say future aid should meet the needs of older people. In addition,
officials say that older people in developing countries usually do not enjoy retirement. Instead,
they often face poor living conditions and poor health. The officials say a system other than the
family should be established in developing counties to care for older people.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill Moss.
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