Global Population Ageing: Peril or Promise? (New WEF eBook)

This is an excel­lent (and free) “big pic­ture” eBook pub­lished by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum to con­tex­tu­al­ize why, and how, our soci­eties, poli­cies and sys­tems will need updat­ing in order to bet­ter man­age glob­al pop­u­la­tion ageing.

EBook descrip­tion: Glob­al age­ing, in devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries alike, will dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter the way that soci­eties and economies work. The issues include how indi­vid­u­als find ful­fil­ment, at what age they retire, and their qual­i­ty of life once they do retire; how gov­ern­ments devise social con­tracts to pro­vide finan­cial secu­ri­ty; how the old­er and younger gen­er­a­tions inter­act as they divide up the eco­nom­ic pie; how busi­ness­es staff their jobs to com­pen­sate in many coun­tries for shrink­ing work­forces; and how health sys­tems respond to the altered needs of those liv­ing longer.

To down­load eBook, Click Here (opens PDF in new window).

A pre­vi­ous paper on this top­ic was pub­lished in jour­nal Glob­al Pol­i­cy last year, titled The Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety: Pol­i­cy Prin­ci­ples.

Descrip­tion: In 2008, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF) cre­at­ed the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils – an amal­ga­ma­tion of sci­en­tists, pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers, aca­d­e­mics, physi­cians and busi­ness lead­ers with the task of devis­ing trans­for­ma­tion­al inno­va­tion in glob­al gov­er­nance for the pur­pose of advanc­ing knowl­edge and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly devel­op­ing solu­tions for the most cru­cial issues fac­ing human­i­ty. Because of its over­ar­ch­ing effect on many aspects of soci­ety, a Coun­cil was cre­at­ed to address glob­al issues asso­ci­at­ed with an age­ing soci­ety. The Coun­cils have the task of chal­leng­ing pre­vail­ing assump­tions, mon­i­tor­ing trends, propos­ing solu­tions, devis­ing strate­gies, mak­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als and eval­u­at­ing the effec­tive­ness of actions using mea­sur­able bench­marks. This report is the first prod­uct of the WEF’s Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety – our goal is to lay down the ini­tial prin­ci­ples that will guide our actions in the com­ing years.

To down­load paper, Click Here (opens PDF in new window).