In the future it is expected that there is a higher proportion of older people than young people.<br />
Is it a positive or negative development? <br />
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The trend that the proportion of old people among the whole population are increasing constantly is observed in many countries in the last few decades. In my personal opinion, this change is bringing more problematic factors to the society rather than benefit.<br />
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Some people may insist that old people are, as well, a very important part of the society, who could contribute values in many areas, such as, medical, science and technology. The more experiences they have the more values they can create. I have to admit that in some certain areas which are technical oriented, old people who have a life time experiences are a very strong asset of human being in terms of passing their knowledge and experiences to the next generations, however, the elderly who have technical background only consist of a small proportion of old people population, even for those who do have experiences after they reach higher age, the reduction of the memory and the thinking ability could also make most of them not as valuable as they were.<br />
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On the other hand, the negative effects brought by this trend are inevitable. Most obviously, although the clinical technology improved significantly in the past century, the healthy condition of the old people is inevitably getting worse with their age growing, as a result governments or insurance companies who pay the medical costs of the old people need more budget, which will in turn increase the burden of the younger generations who already surfed a decrease in percentage. Moreover, the elderly have even more psychological problems than physical ones with the unbalance of the proportion between youngsters and old people. Taking Chinese people as an example, as a result of the one child policy, most of the families in China have 4 grand parents, with the increasing pressure that the younger generation confronted, they don’t have enough time to look after them, consequently the old parents are left with emotional vacuum, especially for those who lost their mates and lived alone.<br />
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In summary, with the increasing percentage of the elderly it brings unbalance to the structure of population. Government should take actions to improve the birth rate and pay more attention to the old people’s live in the foreseeable future.<br />
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