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Population Aging in India: Facts, Issues, and Options

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Population Change and Impacts in Asia and the Pacific

Part of the book series: New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives ((NFRSASIPER,volume 30))

Abstract

India is undergoing unprecedented demographic changes. Increasing longevity and falling fertility have resulted in a dramatic increase in the population of adults aged 60 and up, in both absolute and relative terms. This change presents wide-ranging and complex health, social, and economic challenges, both current and future. This chapter lays out the context, scope, and magnitude of India’s demographic changes. It then details the major challenges these shifts pose in the interconnected areas of health, gender, and income security. We also present an overview of India’s recent and ongoing initiatives to adapt to population aging and provide support to older adults and their families. We conclude with policy recommendations that may serve as a productive next step forward.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These countries are, as of July 2016, China (1.38 billion), India (1.31 billion), United States of America (322 million), Indonesia (258 million), Brazil (208 million), Pakistan (189 million), Nigeria (182 million), Bangladesh (161 million), Russian Federation (143 million), Mexico (127 million), Japan (127 million), Philippines (101 million), and Ethiopia (99.4 million) (United Nations 2015).

  2. 2.

    When discussing the scope and nature of the challenges of population aging, differentiating the “old” (60+) from the “oldest old” (80+) is important and helpful, as the needs and capacities of those in their 80s and older tend to differ significantly from those in their 60s and 70s.

  3. 3.

    Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are a measure of healthy life used by the World Health Organization and other health-monitoring bodies.

  4. 4.

    This prediction is primarily based on the trend of Indian women’s life expectancy increasing at a faster rate than men’s over the past several decades. Since the 1970s, Indian female life expectancy has been consistently increasing at a higher rate than male life expectancy, ranging from about one-half to two percentage points more over each 5-year interval between 1970 and the present day. To a lesser extent, this projection is also due to the expected convergence of Indian life expectancy trends to the world average: globally, females currently enjoy a greater advantage over males in life expectancy at age 60 than they do in India.

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Acknowledgment

This chapter was prepared as a part of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India, which is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (R01AG042778).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Arunika Agarwal & David E. Bloom

  2. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alyssa Lubet

  3. Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Elizabeth Mitgang

  4. International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Sanjay Mohanty

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  1. Arunika Agarwal
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Correspondence to David E. Bloom .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis (NIDEA), University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Jacques Poot

  2. School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Matthew Roskruge

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Agarwal, A., Lubet, A., Mitgang, E., Mohanty, S., Bloom, D.E. (2020). Population Aging in India: Facts, Issues, and Options. In: Poot, J., Roskruge, M. (eds) Population Change and Impacts in Asia and the Pacific. New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives, vol 30. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0230-4_13

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