That aging population
Editorial
Kaieteur News
March 16, 2007
Guyana 's aging population tells a story of migration and of people living longer. In fact, the issue of the aging population seems to be a global issue. Gone are the days when the prescribed lifespan was the 70 years prescribed by the Bible.
The fact that people are living longer is due to better living standards and vastly improved medical facilities. And the population is aging because people are producing less and less children even as young Guyana is migrating, most for economic reasons.
But despite its aging population, Guyana is still reluctant to adjust the age of retirement to make use of older people who at one time were considered the font of experience.
When this phenomenon was first reported in one of the European countries, the view was that people were responding to the fears that went up as the world's population grew by leaps and bounds. In 20 years, the global population had doubled with China leading the way, closely followed by India .
The pundits proclaimed that pretty soon there would be too many people for the world to feed and hunger and poverty would become more widespread. Such dire predictions are being issued at this time by people monitoring the world's fishing grounds. They are contending that in light of excessive fishing in the known fishing grounds, the fish are not allowed to reach maturity and to spawn.
As part of its contribution to restricting the population expansion, India began offering free vasectomies and pressed the issue of birth control. China adopted even more drastic measures. It passed legislation restricting the number of children a family could have. That legislation prescribed that no family should have more than one child and only by special dispensation could they have a second. To secure the special dispensation, that first child must either be physically incapacitated or dead.
This created other social conditions. Many male-dominated families preferred sons so they killed their daughters. Many were prosecuted but for the greater part, the authorities turned a blind eye. Some parts of China are now paying for the decision to prefer males over the female child. There is a shortage of women in those societies.
A shortage of women is bound to impact on procreation so the society would surely age faster that normal. But there are other social problems. Unless the society passes a law that allows a woman to marry more than one man, then that society runs the risk of violent love-related murders.
In Guyana where we are not known to shun the female child in preference for sons, we surely would not have the problem of woman shortage. Recent statistics revealed that there are just about an equal number of women and men in our society.
Our problem is much more serious. The older the population, the more government spends on social services such as pensions and health care. Already, given that the government is committed to providing free health care and has committed millions of dollars to such care, one can expect even greater expenditure as the society is forced to cater for older people who would develop a variety of ailments.
The National Insurance Scheme has been contemplating increasing the rate of contribution given that it must pay increasing sums by way of pension even as its contribution base appears to be declining.
The Scheme has taken to investing as one means of ensuring that it has the ability to pay its pensions to all the deserving contributors. Its most significant investment has been in the Berbice River Bridge , which will pay no less that 15 per cent per annum on the investment.
But we still need to examine the state of affairs as it affects production of the very things necessary for survival in the society. The older one becomes, the less capable is he in the area of physical labour but that seems to be the direction in which this country is heading if its young population is disappearing.
And we still have not examined the need for people to continue in certain positions when replacements are not readily available. If the government is bent on maintaining the current ages of retirement, it may come to the conclusion that it would save on its current expenditure.
Then again it might find itself in a situation where various aspects of the productive sector could become idle, to the detriment of the nation.