Written by Olivia Nater | Published: September 17, 2026
People are living longer while the global fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) is decreasing, resulting in population aging – an increase in the number of older people relative to younger people. This greying of the population and the large wave of retirees it brings is sometimes called the “silver tsunami.” Many governments and economists fear it due to the strain elderly dependents could place on economies and pension systems. Should we be concerned?
An Aging World: 2025, a new report by the United States Census Bureau, projects that the share of the world population age 65 and older will almost double from 10.5% to 19.6% between 2025 and 2060.
It states that between 2020 and 2025, the proportion of people 65+ exceeded the proportion of kids age five and younger for the first time in recorded history.
The Census Bureau’s global population projections deviate slightly from the United Nations Population Division ones due to methodological differences. The UN projects a peak of 10.3 billion in 2084, while the Census Bureau projects a peak of 10.6 billion in 2092. This report only considers projections up to 2060, however – both the UN and Census Bureau project a population size of around 10 billion for that year.
According to the Census Bureau, over half of the projected growth to 2060 will come from an increase in the population aged 65 and over, while the number of people aged 0–19 is projected to stay relatively constant due to persistent low fertility. By 2060, almost one-fifth of the global population will be 65 and over.
Japan, which has been shrinking since 2008 and made headlines recently because its population of centenarians has exceeded 100,000, was the oldest country in the world in 2025, with 29.7% of people age 65 or older. By 2060, however, South Korea, which has the world’s lowest fertility rate (just 0.8 births per woman in 2025), is projected to become the oldest country. In 2060, 41% of South Korea’s population is projected to be at least 65 years old.
At a regional level, Europe has the highest proportion of senior citizens, and this will still be the case in 2060. The percentage of European citizens age 65 or over is projected to increase from 21% to 30.8% between 2025 and 2060. In terms of absolute numbers, however, the world’s youngest region, Africa, is projected to have more older people than Europe in 2060 due to rapid population growth.
Despite widespread “baby bust” alarmism in the United States, this country is not actually aging very fast. The US is ranked 48th oldest out of 227 countries, with 18.9% of its population age 65 or older. By 2060, older adults are projected to make up 23.4% of the US population, which will push the US back to 110th place globally due to other countries aging much faster.
More than half of all countries now have fertility rates below the replacement level (2.1 births per woman, which accounts for child mortality). Attempts by policymakers in these countries to increase fertility rates via a range of pronatalist policies have so far been mostly fruitless. Once fertility rates fall below the replacement rate, they generally don’t return to higher levels – a phenomenon known as the “low fertility trap.”
There are many cited reasons for this development, including the rising cost of raising kids and growing concern over the state of the world.
At the global level, however, the root driver of fertility decline is women gaining more decision-making power over their bodies and lives, which is a huge success story. Smaller families are becoming the social norm even in historically high-fertility countries because they bring many benefits, such as enabling greater investment per child and facilitating women’s participation in the workforce.
The other cause of population aging is people living longer, which is also something to be celebrated. According to the Census Bureau, average global life expectancy is projected to increase from 73.5 years in 2025 to 78.1 years in 2060.
Finally, population aging is an inevitable side effect of slower and eventually zero population growth, which is key to solving our environmental crises and ensuring a good quality of life for all.
Population aging is not without its challenges, of course. A shrinking workforce can slow GDP growth, which remains a priority for most governments. Aging also strains old-age entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which were set up under the (unrealistic) assumption that populations would keep growing forever.
Policymakers in sub-replacement-fertility countries are concerned about a growing old-age dependency ratio — the number of elderly people relative to the number of working-age people. The global old-age dependency ratio is projected to increase from 16.1 to 32.1 between 2025 and 2060, meaning there will be 16 more people aged 65+ per 100 people of working age in 2060 than there are in 2025. On the flipside, however, the young-age or youth dependency ratio (the proportion of children aged 0–14 per 100 people of working age) is projected to decline from 37.3 in 2025 to 31.9 in 2060.
Pronatalists urging people to have more babies tend to forget that children are dependents too. A better way to determine workers’ actual burden of support is to consider the total dependency ratio, which is usually calculated as the sum of children up to age 14 and everyone age 65 and older, divided by the number of people considered “working age” (between the ages of 15 and 64). Importantly, in high-income countries, young people tend to become full members of the workforce in their early- to mid-20s, not when they turn 15. If the youth dependency ratio were calculated as the number of young people up to age 22 compared to a “working-age” group of those aged 23–64, for example, the economic challenges presented by low fertility would not look as dire.
The projected increase in the total dependency ratio is smaller than the projected increase in the old-age dependency ratio. In 2025, the total dependency ratio was estimated at 53.4 (meaning there were 53.4 people aged 0–14 and 65+ per 100 people aged 15–64). By 2060, the ratio is projected to increase to 64, i.e. there will be 10 more dependents per 100 people of working age than in 2025.
Currently, Africa has the highest total dependency ratio of all major world regions due to its high fertility rates resulting in a large proportion of babies and children. In 2025, Africa had 74.6 dependent-age people for every 100 working-age people. By 2060, Europe is projected to have the highest total dependency ratio (79.4) due to a high old-age dependency ratio.
Not all older people are dependentsJust as most 15-year-olds in high-income countries aren’t yet working, plenty of people 65+ still are, especially those in knowledge-based jobs. The problem with the old-age dependency ratio is that it counts everyone who is 65 and older as “dependent,” regardless of whether those people are still working.
The Census Bureau report points out that the labor force participation rate for people age 65 and older in high-income countries increased between 2012 and 2022, and that many older people also make valuable contributions in the form of volunteer and unpaid care work. Indeed, a 65-year-old is arguably a lot more “useful” to society than a six-year-old.
Nevertheless, it is important that governments invest in extending people’s healthy life expectancy or “healthspan.” In the US in particular, while people are living longer, they are also spending more time living with chronic illnesses in their later years. Between 2016 and 2019, an estimated 73% of the US population age 65 or older suffered from two or more chronic conditions (multimorbidity). Based on current trends, healthy life expectancy is projected to grow less than overall life expectancy. At a global level, mean healthy life expectancy at birth is projected to increase by 2.8 years for women and 3.4 years for men between 2022 and 2050, while overall life expectancy is projected to increase by 4.2 years for women and 4.9 years for men.
Removing barriers to healthcare as well as greater investment in preventive care will be essential to ensuring older citizens can remain able-bodied and productive for as long as possible. Health system reforms are especially critical in the US, which has by far the worst expenditure to health outcome ratio of any wealthy country.
The Census Bureau report highlights that a one-year increase in healthy life expectancy in the US is estimated to be worth an astounding $38 trillion in healthcare saving costs and productivity gains.
The authors state that while over the next decade, the average increase in government health spending (2.6% of GDP) is projected to be twice the average growth in government revenues (1.3% of GDP) across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, this increase is primarily driven by price inflation, expensive technological advances, and end-of-life (non-age-related) expenditures.
They write,
“Pessimistic views of aging minimize the contributions older people make to families, communities, and workplaces and mistake aging as the main reason for increasing health care expenditure.”
Pension systems and entitlement programs that rely on a continuously growing workforce will also need substantial reforms. Under current trends, Social Security is expected to become insolvent by 2032, and Medicare by 2033. Insolvency could be prevented or at least significantly delayed with tax reforms, such as raising or eliminating the Social Security payroll tax cap and taxing non-wage income.
Another way to lessen the impacts of aging is to boost workforce participation and productivity by making efforts to include people who have traditionally been excluded, such as mothers of young children, elderly people, and those with disabilities — groups that often benefit from flexible hours and remote options — and importantly, by alleviating childhood poverty and investing in education and skills training for people at all life stages.
Technological developments have also played an important role in increasing per capita productivity. A recent analysis spanning multiple countries and seven decades of demographic change, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that lower birthrates and population aging are associated with higher GDP per worker. This was found to have fully offset any negative economic impacts of population aging, and was attributed to technology-driven labor savings and shifts toward high-tech industries.
Two demographers recently shared important insights from “super-aging” South Korea in The Conversation:
“…the strongest lesson from South Korea is about timing: Aging societies have more options when they act before fiscal pressure, labor shortages and unmet care needs become severe. South Korea has created important institutions and continues to adapt the system as needs change, especially in long-term care, but its experience also shows the costs of allowing policy and public attitudes to lag behind demographic reality.”
We have the solutions to prepare for the “silver tsunami” and adapt economies and societies to older populations. Governments would be wise to invest in these solutions now while there is still time, instead of futilely attempting to reverse the established small family norm.
We took the floor at the 59th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD59) with a clear message: evidence matters, rights matter, and we cannot afford to let the global conversation on population drift…
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