Health Systems for Aging Societies in Asia and the Pacific

Abstract

The most recent statistics available suggest that the share of population aged 60C years and over in the Asia Pacific will rise from 7.6% in 2015 to 17.8% by 2050. The greying of populations in this region poses important and interlinked policy challenges for economies, families and especially the health sector. The economic implications are well appreciated. The Asia Pacific region, particularly China, Southeast Asia and India (more recently), has enjoyed rapid economic growth, driven by a combination of growth-friendly policies and large increases in working-age populations, a phenomenon referred to as the demographic dividend. But as populations age, the demographic contribution to economies will fade, and tighter national budgetary constraints are likely to emerge. A key driver of aging populations has been the so-called fertility transition, characterized by an overall trend toward smaller families. The fertility transition, itself an outcome of improved life spans due to public health interventions such as clean water, sanitation and vaccinations, and the advent of modern medicine, laid the foundation for rapid increases in working age populations and household investments in health and education. But the same forces underpin the decline of traditional family support systems, with fewer adult offspring to bear economic and social support responsibility for the elderly. Moreover, much of the economic growth in the Asia Pacific region has been concentrated in the informal sector, which is traditionally poorly served by social protection tools for families such as access to subsidized health services and pensions. It is in the region’s health sector where the policy challenges associated with aging are likely the most acute. Rising numbers of the elderly has meant a growing prevalence of chronic non-communicable conditions (NCDs). The overall increase in the prevalence and mortality from these conditions has been driven by population aging, owing primarily to declining fertility rates and age-specific mortality rates, Received 27 June 2017; revised 12 July 2017; accepted 27 July 2017. *Correspondence to: Ajay Mahal; Email: ajay.mahal@unimelb.edu.au 2017 Ajay Mahal and Barbara McPake. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.