Ageing Population Woes

Lets face it - our population is ageing. Advances in modern medicine continue to increase the life expectancy of Americans, which is now over seventy for both men and women alike. This increased life expectancy; unfortunately, is not all good news. Yes, we have longer lives, yes we get to spend more time with our loved ones before passing on, but, coupled with a declining birth rate, there are major political, social and economic downfalls that ensue when everyone is living longer lives.

On the political side, the elderly are the demographic that votes the most. They are already the most pandered-too age group, and their numbers are growing. While this is good for the elderly, this isn’t particularly good for the country, nor the rest of her citizens. Pandering of this magnitude can only lead to one possible conclusion: the only political opinions that really matter, are those of the elderly. The elderly don’t care about schools, they’ve already been educated. Cut school funding. The elderly don’t care about our roads, they’re not going to be using them for much longer anyway. Cut infrastructure spending. The elderly don’t care about things that don’t effect the elderly. They do; however, care about the increasing costs of prescription medication, and would like more money spent to reduce those costs. The elderly, the most active political demographic in this country, don’t care about things that are important to the countries future. Just thinking about how the pandering to this demographic is only going to increase over time is very frightening.

Socially, an older population means a lot of things. Unfortunately, not many of them are good.

Financially and economically, the issue of social security sets off a blaring alarm: What’s in store for the future of social security? Will I have to continue to pay into social security now, if I’m not going to receive its benefits in the future? How is it possible that a small, and getting smaller, group of working-age laborers can possibly support the large, and getting larger, group of social security receiving elderly? There simply can not be a long-lasting fix to social security that will benefit the youth of today who are just starting to pay into the system. That’s only one of many economic issues cased by the decreasing mortality rate. Another problem is: lower Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. Fewer workers, means fewer goods and services being produced, which means less money being earned, which means lower GDP. Lower GDP is bad for a country, this signifies a decline in the value of the countries currency, as well as a decline in world economic power. The negatives on our economy caused by a larger life expectancy are easy to see, and hard to fix.

There are many political, social, and economic drawbacks to living longer lives.