Open to the NYU Abu Dhabi community and by invitation.
11 September 2023
16.30 – 18.00
A4-008, The Reading Room
With Alexandra Tragaki (Harokopio University)
Ten months ago, on November 15th 2022, the world population reached the 8 billion milestone, only 11 years after the population had hit 7 billion people. Though at a decelerated pace, due to declining fertility rates almost everywhere around the world, global population continues to increase, and will most probably reach 10 billion sometime by 2050. Today demographers worry less about the growth rate of the total population and more about aging and declining populations. Surprisingly, the nations with shrinking populations are not necessarily European. Deaths currently outpace births across large swaths of Asia. In 2022, alone, China lost a population the size of San Francisco (-850.000 persons), Japan the size of Las Vegas (about 600.000). Two out of three Asian countries and seven out of ten countries globally experience fertility rates below replacement level. Demographers’ attention has thus turned to the growth rate of specific age-groups. Societies have never before had so many different age clusters whose divergent, even conflicting, needs require a rethink of policy formulation on demographic issues. The climate crisis has indicated that the framework necessary for an unprecedented global challenge needs to involve adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. It may offer a blueprint to tackle challenges of aging societies thereby ensuring that people and institutions ‘age better’ and that policies help build resilience by developing both a longer-term perspective and policy learning framework.