Population aging is progressing faster in developing countries, including those that also have a large young population, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Aging is a triumph of development and increasing longevity is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. People live longer due to improvements in nutrition, sanitary conditions, advances in medicine, health care, education and economic well-being.
The older generation is not a homogeneous group, for which generalist policies are sufficient. Each group of elderly people needs programs and intervention models suited to each segment.
National and local governments, international organizations, communities and civil society must invest in aging from birth, because it generates concrete advances, with a positive cost-benefit ratio.
For example, there are those who consider that there should be a State Secretariat for Older People (which would reinforce policy measures for the sector in question, corresponding to specific objectives), or a citizen’s store for older people, inserted in an intergenerational structure that encompasses health services across families.
It is necessary to promote the personal fulfillment of older people, in health and well-being, leisure and profile, with their rights and capabilities, without infantilization or degradation, and to stimulate the literacy and empowerment of older people, with timeless knowledge and acquisition of useful skills for all generations.
Respect and dignity
It is imperative to address the longevity and potential of new communication technologies, with increased life expectancy, adaptation of society’s structures and application of artificial intelligence, and generate social inclusion and human rights, with success and quality of success, in a social organization based on respect and dignity of life, promoting advocacy (influencing public policies), and combating poverty, to the detriment of profit and denial of rights.
It is urgent to apply the Active and Healthy Aging Action Plan 2023-2026 in Portugal, taking into account its strategy and increase, creation of networks and quality of life; consideration of the solidarity economy as a form of self-management, cooperation networks, fair trade and solidarity consumption; to the care and adaptation of the “silver economy” in gray economy (not to be confused with gray plague…), as a system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that aims to use the purchasing potential of aging people and satisfy consumption needs to those who have high purchasing power and are exempt from economic burdens.
For active and healthy aging, it is necessary to implement social protection plans that ensure economic income and access to essential health care and social provision services for all older people, and ensure a safety net that contributes to the postponement disability and the prevention of impoverishment in old age.
There is no concrete evidence that the aging of the population, in itself, has harmed economic development or that there are countries that do not have sufficient resources to guarantee pensions and health care for the older population.
Population aging presents challenges for governments and society, but it does not need to be seen as a crisis. It can and should be planned to transform challenges into opportunities.
Innovating to live is the creation and development of the potential of older people, which makes life with attributes and characteristics of greater empowerment, satisfaction, enjoyment and dignified and qualitative longevity.
Doctor
