Global population over 60 increasing rapidly; UN role in solving their problems stressed.

Global population over 60 increasing rapidly; UN role in solving their problems stressed

The global population of people over 60 years of age will increase to 610 million in the year 2000, up from 380 million in 1980. By the year 2025, more than a billion people will reach that age. Even faster increases will be seen in the 80-and-above age group which is 1980 numbered 34 million -- 58 million by the year 2000, and 114 million by 2025.

These statistics were highlighted in a report on the question of aging (A/42/567) considered in the Assembly's Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) with a cluster of other social concerns, including questions related to youth, crime prevention and the disabled.

In his report, the Secretary-General stressed the many challenges that lay ahead for implementing the United Nations 1982 International Plan of Action on Aging. The trend towards aging could significantly affect a society's development potential, particularly when real dependency rates among the elderly were high. Offsetting the growing awareness of problems of aging and support for relevant policies and programmes were the increasing economic constraints and related factors which seriously affected the Plan's implementation.

He called for strengthening the interconnected roles of the United Nations as an international forum for highlighting problems of the aging and securing possible solutions, as a provider of technical and financial co-operation, and as a mechanism for co-ordinating global efforts to achieve the goals and objectives of the International Plan of Action.

The Assembly asked Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to strengthen existing programmes on aging and UN system-wide co-ordination in that field, and welcomed the establishment in Malta of the International Institute on Aging. Governments and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations were asked to contribute to the UN Trust Fund for Aging.

Other concerns

The United States voted against a text calling for States to give priority to measures to secure the implementation and enjoyment by youth of the right to education and to work, in conditions of peace, with a view to resolving the problem of unemployment among youth. It was of the view that the opportunity to work was best provided by a society respecting individual liberty and fundamental freedoms and that education and employment opportunities were best provided in an atmosphere of individual liberties and fundamental freedoms.

In other action, the Assembly called for steps to promote youth employment in all sectors of the economy and increased technical co-operation activities towards that end. The importance of direct participation of youth in projects and meetings of concern to them was stressed, and the use of existing structures of co-operation between youth and the UN system to improve channels of communication between youth and youth organizations was asked.

Thorough preparations for the 1990 UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders were requested. High priority was asked for measures to assist persons with disabilities. The Assembly decided to observe in 1989 the twentieth anniversary of the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, recommending that the day of its adoption -- 11 December -- be proclaimed Social Progress and Development Day.

The Assembly also affirmed that further exchange of national experience in achieving far-reaching social and economic changes for the purpose of social progress would contribute to implementation of the International Development Strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade.

SHIFTING THE BALANCE

Photo: By 2025 the ratio of over 60s to adults aged 15-59 in East Asia is expected to double.

In China 7 workers supported 1 old person in 1975. In 2025 they will be supporting 2.

Photo: Total world population is expected to treble between 1950 and 2025. But the U.N. predicts a five-fold increase in the population of over 60s.