The Increasing Aging Population and Their Issues

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                As our life expectancy increases and our fertility decreases we will see an increase in our older population. This proves a problem as we have push the retirement age and those that do reach retirement age are getting less and less help from the government. This increase in the older population could lead to more government spending, which is a good thing, but could easily turn sour as that funding could have gone to other things such as schools and other government programs.
                Solutions for these problems include pushing retirement age even further but reducing the hours that they work and are thus able to continue paying taxes to lessen their impact and continue to save. Some also suggest encouraging the elderly into activities such as volunteering and finding other forms of income to take their time.
We have seen the effects of longer life expectancy and a decrease in fertility in the country of Japan. They’re a country with a larger elderly population compared to other age groups, so they are already trying various policies in helping the elderly. One difference between the States and Japan is that many older Japanese tend to live with their younger family, so they have a support group and have a smaller impact on government spending. While in the states we tend to leave the nest and leave the elderly to either fend for themselves or place them in retirement homes, so taking what Japan does and implementing some of their policies might not work.

For more visit: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/05/02/two-solutions-to-the-challenges-of-population-aging/

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