Is our ageing society good or bad news?

A remarkable transformation is underway across the world. Falling fertility rates and rising life expectancy mean there are fewer young people and more older ones. The result is an ageing society, characterised by a rising average age and a growing proportion of older people. This is often seen as a bad thing: most old people don’t work, they need a pension, and their health care is costly. The result is rising government debt and an economy staggering under the burden of a high old-age dependency ratio. But this negative approach is a strange way to frame one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements.

When I was born in 1965, the most common age of death in the UK was children in the first year of life. Today it is 86. We are, on average, living longer and in better health for longer. How have we turned all this into a bad news story?

Rather than fall prey to this pessimism about an ageing society it is about time we engaged in the same discussions about adaption and adjustment that characterise debate around Artificial Intelligence and climate change.