8 Billion and Counting
The following is an excerpt from 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape our World.
As older people and their governments navigate how to meet the financial needs of both individuals and the state, something is bound to get caught in the crossfire. There’s good reason to believe it will be the family. We know that politics is about who gets what, when, and where, and it’s always about trade-offs. But what are the trade-offs in an aging society? Is education sacrificed for entitlements? Is military spending sacrificed for Medicare? In the face of fewer young workers to support growing numbers of elderly, who will bear the brunt of the sacrifice?
In part, the answer depends on the ways political systems amplify or dilute voices. If a society’s “old” band together with one voice, leaders of democracies and authoritarian regimes alike may listen. But, are they really singing from the same sheet of music? While it’s true that in democracies such as the United States and Japan, older voters show at the polls in far greater numbers than do younger voters, voter turnout gives an incomplete picture of the gray power. So far, age hasn’t been a salient identity. I have yet to see a Gray Pride T-shirt (calling dibs on trademark), and there are at least three good reasons.
First, age is transitional, not permanent, meaning that each per- son passes through different ages; other divisions, such as social class or cultural identity, cut across age divisions. In one of my first political demography studies, I found that in the world’s three oldest countries, Japan, Germany, and Italy, age had not emerged as a cohesive political identity as of 2008—it had been unable to supplant regional identity, for instance. A 16-year-old Bavarian had more in common, politically, with a 60-year-old Bavarian than with someone her own age living in northeastern Germany. We see plenty of diversity in political party preferences within age groups: Race, class, and even gender often matter much more than age. Second, issues of old age are important to all, as everyone anticipates being aged one day. Third, older people are not purely self-interested but also care about the support of other age groups, as the $179 billion that American grandparents spend annually on their grandchildren attests.
While the evidence that a politics of aging is arising at the polls is mixed, this is a rich area for future researchers to explore and one to keep an eye on.
Younger generations in developed countries worry that they will share less in the prosperity of their countries as increasing numbers of elderly demand more of the state’s resources—and more from younger workers to pay for those entitlements. But on the flip side, many elderly worry that as family size shrinks, there will be too few young to care for them and society will cast them aside. Japan’s elderly have made headlines for increasingly committing petty crimes, often to garner a spot in jail, where they will be taken care of, as many can no longer rely on the care of their children. According to a story in BusinessInsider, one out of every five Japanese prison inmates is a senior citizen, which by itself doesn’t mean much because they could have aged in place. But, 90 percent of elderly women in prison got there by shoplifting—a great way to land in the slammer without hurting anyone. Japan’s elderly inmates not only get their three square meals a day and room to rest their heads, they also get care for their special medical needs. Effectively, the jail becomes the nursing home.
“Transfers between generations are not unidirectional, nor are they single-faceted.”
With stories like this and other popular images of the elderly, one might think that all elderly are desperate for social security supplements and handouts from family. In truth, many older people are just as likely to share their resources with family members of other generations as they are to receive from them, as anyone who has benefited from grand- parent babysitting services knows. Transfers between generations are not unidirectional, nor are they single-faceted. They may take the form of time (service), co-residence, or financial transfers, which could mean monetary or material support. Older people also provide important intangible exchanges, such as emotional support, to younger generations. In many ways, the young and old in society are set up for a symbiotic relationship. In the Netherlands, there’s housing that mixes college students and seniors—two groups with relatively less money than those in the middle ages. This system works because the younger Dutch have more time for volunteering and helping out their elderly neighbors. In Italy, Milan’s “Take Home a Student” project matches elderly in the most expensive city in the most aged country in Europe (tied with Germany) with university students. It helps both groups combat loneliness and deal with economic challenges. The project, run by MeglioMilano (Better Milan), has matched 600 pairs since 2004. Social expectations about care relationships between young and old differ radically around the world and within societies, often depending on whether someone is rich or poor, male or female. The burden—or benefit—is not equally spread. Yet, when we discuss aging, we often leave out these distinctions.
The elderly may be choosing to go to jail in Japan, but in Singapore it’s the adult children who face penalty if they neglect their elders. The Maintenance of Parents Act of 1995 (and 2010 amendment) mandated that adult children have a legal responsibility to take care of their aging parents. In an academic study of Singapore and Taiwan, my colleague and I found that Singapore’s policy was an attempt to institutionalize a system that encourages individuals, rather than the state, to shoulder the expenses of population aging. This “Confucian welfare state” model emphasizes society’s responsibility, while Taiwan has gone from a similar system to a social welfare state more reminiscent of European countries as it has become increasingly democratic.
Certainly, there is no one model of family support among the countries around the world or even among those with similar cultures. Among Asian states, for example, care patterns vary greatly. In China, sons are still expected to care for their elderly parents; this expectation has made sons more valuable than daughters and was one driver of the high abortion rates of female fetuses during the tenure of the One- Child Policy. If a couple could only have one child, they’d need to ensure it was a son who could take care of them in old age. Likewise, in Singapore the elderly rely much more on their sons than on their daughters, but in the Philippines and Thailand there’s no clear pattern of elderly relying on sons or daughters more than the other. In some countries the elderly may be more likely to receive transfers from daughters and in others from sons. Thus, when we study population aging, we need to be aware that adaptations can’t be one-size-fits-all.
I commonly hear two bold assertions about the implications of population aging. One concerns China: When I give talks in policy circles, the audience typically argues that China’s government will have to start giving more generous support to older people because their numbers are growing. But as of now, the government, children, and parents in both China’s rural and urban areas see the responsibility for elder care lying with the family—not with the state—and because political power is centralized there, public opinion has limited influence on policy making. China is not alone. Social security or pension coverage for the elderly is meager in several other countries facing population aging. While that’s good news for the state, in the sense that the financial burden is relatively lower as the population ages, it’s bad news for the elderly, who may suffer higher rates of poverty or neglect.
The second assertion is that aging and shrinking countries will have to start opening to immigration. Is there more truth to that assertion? When a country’s population ages and its workforce shrinks, the immediate worry is that there won’t be enough workers to support all the older people who benefit from generous entitlements such as social security and health care. Those worries are justified (although the calculus is not that simple, as we have seen), and many countries have chosen to supplement their workforces by bringing in outsiders: immigrants. But not every country. Although it lets in small numbers with specialized skills, Japan has chosen to shrink rather than to risk the upheaval of bringing in a mass of culturally different outsiders to supplement its labor force. In Japan, just 1.7 percent of the population (or roughly 2.2 million people) is foreign or foreign-born. Japan is on pace to have three workers for every two retirees by 2060, but Japan doesn’t have to open its doors to immigrants even though it has a shrinking workforce. The country has choices, and one of them is to preserve ethnic homogeneity instead of accepting foreign workers—right now, that appears to be the top choice. In 2010, an Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll asked Japanese about accepting immigrants to “maintain economic vitality”: 26 percent of respondents favored the idea, and 65 percent opposed it. But choices have consequences. Even with issuing visas for unskilled guest workers, there were 163 vacancies for every 100 job seekers as of November 2018. In Shinzo Abe’s words, “We are not considering adopting a so-called immigration policy . . . [but] [t]o cope with the labor shortage, we will expand the current system to accept foreign workers in special fields. We will accept foreign human resources that are skilled and work-ready, but only for a limited time.” Despite Japan’s ethnic homogeneity, the population has mostly been supportive of the guestworker program, perhaps because leaders have insisted on the temporary nature of the program, but if temporary changes to permanent, there will be many political and social consequences.
Immigration can offset population aging, but it won’t reverse it. And influxes of large numbers of immigrants bring their own social challenges (as Chapter 4 will discuss in more detail). Given the diverse models of the relationship between the family and the state worldwide, the social implications of population aging are varied. In every country and culture, the eldest in society need care in their last years, and some- one has to provide it or the elderly will suffer neglect. Innovative solutions such as multigenerational housing or immigration of elder-care workers can fill in, but comprehensive and innovative policy solutions are needed, not stop-gap measures.
