“At no time in our history have there been so many old people around. In many countries old people now outnumber young people, a state of affairs that has never before existed in human history.”
No. And this “state of affairs” need not exist in the future. The current crop of oldies is the tough bunch that lived through the depression and WW11: lean times, lean food and a need for resourcefulness. These people and the conditions which made them survivors have long gone, and the current crop of hedonists will not last too long at all.

We hear this old scare campaign as regularly as repeats on television.

Let the young smart arses who currently stuffing up the world worry about it.

Funny that. I thought it was all the old buggers that had stuffed it up!
There is a crop of oldies, the "spend the kids inheritance" crowd that are just selfish coots. These are the ones that run down the education system then made it user pays, they decided that pensions are to be privatised then made billions in fees, who made housing an "investment" while the homeless rate soars and a whole generation gets suckered into life long debt.
These same silly coots exported most of our manufacturing, refused to invest in Aussie science and thought that paper profits could go on forever.
As soon as the overconfident BB's retire and some real skilled managers come up, then the recovery can begin. The old boys club truly has to go!

What a strange article from someone with a medical background; from one who surely must be informed in relation to cancerous growth.

The world has been in steady demographic state for about 100,000 years. Its population achieved a rough stability at maybe 1 million, and optimum average physical health of its individuals for its environment, over that period - of roughly 3,500 generations.

That was until 10,000 years ago. There have been maybe 400 Homo sapiens generations since. During these last generations, human numbers have grown at ominously faster rates – to the extent of reaching cancerous proportions.

It is strange that a man of medicine has authored a paper in which the issue has passed his notice. From that one million 10,000 years ago the changing growth rates should have been noticeable to him, and worrying.

In this latter period the number of generations became shorter for each succeeding doubling of numbers, and after 300 generations numbers had doubled 7 times. That took us to the time of Christ.

Since then the generations per doubling have been (approximately): 45; 10; 4; and 1 generation.

If world population continues to increase at its current 1.2%, there will have been a slowing – taking a little under two generations to double. Are we under remission?

Any medico worth his salt surely would be more concerned with checking continuing cancerous growth rather than society’s ability to adjust to a cancer's remission. Adjusting to steady replacement must surely be less traumatic than that of living with the cancer.

“…ageing offers both challenges and opportunities. It is a rich resource for present and future generations and it need not necessarily be associated with retirement from work, increasing dependency, financial struggle, ill-health and social and spatial exclusion.”

Yes Peter Curson. It is not all doom and gloom.

Any problems created by aging will surely not be anywhere near as bad as problems created by continued rapid population growth, which is espoused as one of the key ways of mitigating the effects of an aging population.

“The main reason for this demographic revolution has been falling fertility. Many developed countries are now either close to or below the replacement level of 2.2 children per family.”

Wow! Isn’t that good news….that many countries are actually getting their fertility rate down to close to replacement level?

I think Mr Right is right. All that we’ve heard about the perils of an aging society in Australia seems to amount to a scare campaign promulgated by those vested-interest mongrels who are not satisfied with our extremely high immigration rate (and increased fertility rate from the abysmal baby bonus bribe)…. and just want it to be a whole lot higher!

Ozandy,

It is the boomers, those you refer to as “old buggers”, who are the ones I’m talking about: the ones who produced the even more incapable and selfish Y generation.

I’m not sure, however, that they will have anything to leave to your generation; not because they are trying to keep it from their heirs, but because they have blown it. Now the next generation, learning from them,(but still whingeing that they will be left nothing) will be even worse, and will probably make up most of the 6% unemployed predicted by 2010, still looking for handouts, not from mum and dad, but from taxpayers who have managed to save a bit.

The other silly thing about the ‘ageing population’ mantra is the silliness of bringing more immigrants – who will age at the same rate as everyone else, and at the same time – to ‘solve’ the problem.

¿Costa geriatrica?

¿Y que te parece el costo del crecimiento de la población? (what about the cost of the growing population?)