Highlights:

The Well-Being of Older Asians to the Fore

Developing Asia is aging rapidly, with the pace accelerating in some economies. Greater longevity is an achievement of long-term socioeconomic development in the Asia and Pacific region, but it also poses new challenges. While older people, those aged 60 and above, accounted for 13.5% of the regional population in 2022, that figure is expected to nearly double to 25.2% by 2050. While aging is more advanced in some economies, even relatively younger ones are facing rapid demographic transition. The unprecedented speed of population aging in Asia and the Pacific stands out, with the onset happening at lower incomes than when advanced economies faced this change. The speed of change in economies like the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) even outpaced earlier projections as birth rates plunged. A concern across the region is the risk that societies will grow old before they amass sufficient resources to adequately support their aging populations.

Absolute poverty for older people has declined, but relative poverty remains substantial. Available data from 22 economies in developing Asia indicate that the incidence of extreme poverty among those aged 65+ declined from 13.1% in 2010–2015 to 3.2% in 2016–2022. This improvement mirrored a reduction in poverty across all age groups in the region. However, in many regional economies, relative poverty rates for older people exceed those of the entire population. Further, conventional poverty data may not capture some complexities of poverty for older people, such as being disadvantaged in resource allocation within households. Population aging may exacerbate inequality by widening income gaps between older people and between them and younger people.

These are among the highlights of a study report from The Asian Development Bank (ADB) regarding population aging in several countries in Asia. In Indonesia, the study was carried out by SurveyMETER at the end of 2022 to early 2023 under the name Indonesia Longitudinal Aging Survey (ILAS). The complete report can be downloaded at the following link:

https://www.adb.org/adpr/editions/aging-well