Dec 26, 2025 06:57 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 26, 2025 07:45 PM by C C.)
Sounds like early prep toward evasive language for undermining retirement and reducing social security -- which Gen-Z doesn't want to fund the increasing burden of. Accordingly, coupled with that strategy of keeping seniors at least partially in the work force (which may fizzle into an illusory goal as AI and robot development accelerates). Agenda-wise, devising political correct or camouflaged speech -- for the solutions of a society struggling with old people -- goes back to aging Solomon Roth seeking assisted suicide (provided by government clinics) in the 1970s film Soylent Green.
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Concerns about ageing society ignore huge opportunities, says population expert
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025...ion-expert
EXCERPTS: Concerns over an ageing population are overblown and society should learn to celebrate and capitalise on its “massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults”, a leading population expert has said.
While pundits and pressure groups have raised concerns over falling fertility rates, highlighting the challenges for the economy and healthcare, others are more upbeat, arguing the rise of the “silver economy” brings new opportunities for growth.
[...] While acknowledging there would be people living into their 80s and 90s who would become frail and need care, Harper said the main opportunity was to capitalise on the increasing health and education of older adults, especially those aged 50 to 70.
She said: “There are some challenges [to an ageing population], but there are also huge opportunities and rather than try and resist it, or stop it, or divert it we should be looking for those opportunities, because we have this massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults.
“And because we’re still stuck in 20th-century institutions that don’t appreciate them and benefit from them, we need to create new ways of living and working that enable us to take advantage of that massive group of adults.”
Experts have stressed the importance of retraining workers, flexible working and a general shift in attitudes towards older workers. Harper said it was also important to tackle inequalities around health and education so that all older adults could make a valuable contribution.
Official figures show the UK population is growing, largely as a result of migration, but also ageing, with 27% of the population expected to be 65 or older by 2072. [...] Yet even Scandinavian countries, which have emphasised gender equality and positive parenting, have failed to raise total fertility rates above replacement level.
Harper said: “What we should be doing is saying there are ways that we can support those, particularly women, who want to have children, and that’s around things like good jobs, good housing, good childcare, good gender equality. But there is always going to be a group, probably growing, of women who have decided that they, for all sorts of reasons, are not going to have children. And in a way, we’ve got to accept that and work with that.”
While Harper said concerns over Covid, the climate crisis and overpopulation might be factors in why some have chosen not to have children, she said there were other reasons too, such as not seeing having children as necessarily part of being an adult woman. “I think that is a really big psychological shift,” she said.
Harper added the idea that a country needed a high fertility rate was rooted in the outdated view that lots of young people were needed to defend a country. “Actually, we don’t need any more. The world has changed,” she said. “High income countries don’t need babies. We just need to change the structure, the economic structure in particular.”
Harper said that people aged 50 to 70 were an “amazing resource” with valuable skills for a knowledge-based economy, with many willing and able to work longer... (MORE - details)
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Concerns about ageing society ignore huge opportunities, says population expert
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025...ion-expert
EXCERPTS: Concerns over an ageing population are overblown and society should learn to celebrate and capitalise on its “massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults”, a leading population expert has said.
While pundits and pressure groups have raised concerns over falling fertility rates, highlighting the challenges for the economy and healthcare, others are more upbeat, arguing the rise of the “silver economy” brings new opportunities for growth.
[...] While acknowledging there would be people living into their 80s and 90s who would become frail and need care, Harper said the main opportunity was to capitalise on the increasing health and education of older adults, especially those aged 50 to 70.
She said: “There are some challenges [to an ageing population], but there are also huge opportunities and rather than try and resist it, or stop it, or divert it we should be looking for those opportunities, because we have this massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults.
“And because we’re still stuck in 20th-century institutions that don’t appreciate them and benefit from them, we need to create new ways of living and working that enable us to take advantage of that massive group of adults.”
Experts have stressed the importance of retraining workers, flexible working and a general shift in attitudes towards older workers. Harper said it was also important to tackle inequalities around health and education so that all older adults could make a valuable contribution.
Official figures show the UK population is growing, largely as a result of migration, but also ageing, with 27% of the population expected to be 65 or older by 2072. [...] Yet even Scandinavian countries, which have emphasised gender equality and positive parenting, have failed to raise total fertility rates above replacement level.
Harper said: “What we should be doing is saying there are ways that we can support those, particularly women, who want to have children, and that’s around things like good jobs, good housing, good childcare, good gender equality. But there is always going to be a group, probably growing, of women who have decided that they, for all sorts of reasons, are not going to have children. And in a way, we’ve got to accept that and work with that.”
While Harper said concerns over Covid, the climate crisis and overpopulation might be factors in why some have chosen not to have children, she said there were other reasons too, such as not seeing having children as necessarily part of being an adult woman. “I think that is a really big psychological shift,” she said.
Harper added the idea that a country needed a high fertility rate was rooted in the outdated view that lots of young people were needed to defend a country. “Actually, we don’t need any more. The world has changed,” she said. “High income countries don’t need babies. We just need to change the structure, the economic structure in particular.”
Harper said that people aged 50 to 70 were an “amazing resource” with valuable skills for a knowledge-based economy, with many willing and able to work longer... (MORE - details)