Global Senior Population May Double By 2050

By 2050, you can expect the world to have considerably aged. The global population rate of citizens who are 65 and above will double by 2050, according to a new federal report.

The news is quite dramatically recorded by The U.S. Census Report, which found that by 2050, the number of seniors will touch 1.6 billion, representing 17 percent of the global population. While the present rate is 617 million or 8.5 percent of the world's population, it expects that American senior citizens will increase from 48 million to 88 million by 2050.

Even the life expectancy rate will shoot up from 68.6 years to 76.2 years, says the report. Those who  are 80 and above, and belong to the "oldest old" group, will also go up from 126.5 million to 446.6 million. Most of them will be living in Asia and Latin America.

"We are seeing population aging in every country in every part of the world," said  John Haaga, the acting director of the National Institute of Aging's (NIA) Division of Behavioral and Social Research. "Many countries in Europe and Asia are further along in the process or moving more rapidly than we are in the United States. Since population aging affects so many aspects of public life - acute and long-term health care needs, pensions, work and retirement, transportation, housing - there is a lot of potential for learning from each other's experience."

Richard J. Hodes, the director of the NIA, who commissioned the report,  reflected: "People are living longer, but that does not necessarily mean that they are living healthier. The increase in our aging population presents many opportunities and also several public health challenges that we need to prepare for. NIA has partnered with Census to provide the best possible data so that we can better understand the course and implications of population aging."

The older populations are thought to be affected by non-infectious diseases, and also infectious diseases in low-income countries.