Population Aging : Is Latin America Ready?

Cotlear, Daniel

World Bank

关键词: ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES;    ADEQUATE HEALTH CARE;    ADULT MORTALITY;    ADULT POPULATION;    AGE DISTRIBUTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/978-0-8213-8487-9
RP-ID  :  58842

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The past half-century has seen enormouschanges in the demographic makeup of Latin America and theCaribbean (LAC). In the 1950s, LAC had a small population ofabout 160 million people, less than today's populationof Brazil. Two-thirds of Latin Americans lived in ruralareas. Families were large and women had one of the highestfertility rates in the world, low levels of education, andfew opportunities for work outside the household.Investments in health and education reached only a smallfraction of the children, many of whom died before reachingage five. Since then, the size of the LAC population hastripled and the mostly rural population has been transformedinto a largely urban population. There have been steepreductions in child mortality, and investments in health andeducation have increased, today reaching a majority ofchildren. Fertility has been more than halved and theopportunities for women in education and for work outsidethe household have improved significantly. Life expectancyhas grown by 22 years. Less obvious to the casual observer,but of significance for policy makers, a population with alarge fraction of dependent children has evolved into apopulation with fewer dependents and a very large proportionof working-age adults. This overview seeks to introduce thereader to three groups of issues related to population agingin LAC. First is a group of issues related to the support ofthe aging and poverty in the life cycle. Second is thequestion of the health transition. Third is an understandingof the fiscal pressures that are likely to accompanypopulation aging and to disentangle the role of demographyfrom the role of policy in that process.