Wolfgang Lutz Wolfgang Lutz, director del Vienna Institute of Demography, desmiente, con argumentos científicos, que el aumento de la esperanza de vida, íntimamente relacionado con la disminución de la tasa de natalidad, deba ser considerado un problema, sino una tendencia que tiene que ser interpretada en términos de incremento de la calidad del capital humano y no en términos cuantitativos. Tal como explica Lutz, es en los países pobres donde la media de edad es más joven -18 años en Etiopía- aumentando esta proporción en los países más ricos -36 años en EEUU y 45 en Alemania- debido, entre otras variables, a las condiciones sanitarias y a la educación.
A esto se le llama Desarrollo Humano. Cabe preguntarnos qué es lo que realmente busca la clase política con sus alarmistas campañas sobre natalidad.
No te pierdas el artículo de Wolfgang Lutz publicado en la Harvard Business Review
La administradora del blog
The Truth About Aging Populations
It has become fashionable to issue dire projections of declining prosperity based on demographic aging. But is that really such a problem?
There
is no doubt that all the countries of the world are getting older, but
they are at very different stages of the process. The median age in the
United States—with half the population older and half younger—is
currently 36. In Ethiopia it’s 18, owing to a higher birthrate and a
lower life expectancy. In other African countries it’s even lower. The
world’s oldest country is Germany, where the median age is 45.
The
pattern is very clear: The young countries are poor, and the old
countries are rich. So why do people fear population aging? I see two
reasons. The first is psychological: The analogy to individual aging
suggests that as populations get older, they grow frail and lose mental
acuity. The second comes from economists and an indicator called the dependency ratio,
which assumes that every adult below age 65 contributes to society, and
everybody above 65 is a burden. And the proportion of people older than
65 is bound to increase.
Yet we
also know that the productivity of some individuals is much higher than
that of others, independent of age. Nothing is inherently special about
the age of 65. Many people live longer and do so mostly in good health.
The saying “Seventy is the new 60” has a sound scientific basis.
Meanwhile, education has been shown to be a key determinant of better
health, longer life, and higher productivity (not to mention
open-mindedness). The active aging of better-educated populations can be
an asset rather than a problem.
To
appreciate how projections based on the simplistic dependency ratio can
be misleading, consider the two population billionaires, China and
India. In 2050 China’s population will be older than India’s because of
its more rapid fertility decline. But so what? China’s population is
much better educated and therefore much more productive. Furthermore,
only a minority of Chinese will retire at age 65. (The majority have no
pension entitlements.) We can expect most Chinese to make meaningful
contributions through work as long as they are in good health,
particularly if they find their jobs interesting and satisfying. Again,
this is largely a question of education. In India today, one out of
three adults has never seen a school from the inside. In China only 8%,
mostly elderly, have no schooling. In India 50% of young women have less
than a junior secondary education; in China the figure is only 15%.
Knowing how important education is to economic performance, who would
seriously claim
that India’s future is brighter than China’s owing to slower aging?
that India’s future is brighter than China’s owing to slower aging?
Population
aging is not irrelevant, but it should be seen in conjunction with
other dimensions of human capital, especially education and health. Here
the prospects are good. In most countries of the world—with the notable
exception of the United States—the young are clearly better educated
than the old and may thus compensate for their smaller numbers through
higher productivity.
Viewing the
quality of human capital as resting on a collection of elements, many of
them manageable, is something that the private sector has been doing
for a long time. Every sizable business pays attention to human resource management.
For governments, the equivalent would be a form of national human
resource management that considered education, migration, family, labor,
health, and retirement as components that interact richly—and together
drive the richness of the future.
.
For governments, the equivalent would be a form of national human
resource management that considered education, migration, family, labor,
health, and retirement as components that interact richly—and together
drive the richness of the future. 
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