The Aging Population

How can Singapore deal with the financial challenges of an aging population? The solution is quite obvious, but the devil is in the details.

During PM Lee's speech, he mentioned “longevity risk”. This is the risk that you end up living longer than you expected, and therefore you eventually run short of money to support yourself. Furthermore, a high proportion of Singaporeans are middle-aged today are choosing not to have children at all. Thus many of them will one day become senior citizens literally without any living relatives at all, to depend on. Harsh as it may sound, the problem is its own solution.

PM Lee described a future where, thanks to advances in medical knowledge and health care, people will live longer. However, the assumption is that you are able to afford living to such an old age, or that someone else will take care of you. Otherwise, death is the simple solution to living too long. That’s the brutal truth. It is not necessarily the case that many old people will not be able to afford food and water. A more likely scenario is that as they grow older and their savings gradually run out, they find themselves unable to afford the various medical treatments that would prolong life. So essentially, your life expectancy has become a matter of money. Your life expectancy is a function of the medical care available to you, which in turn is a function of the amount of money you have. Ultimately you die, not of starvation, but of a curable heart condition which you could not afford to cure.

My next point is about the likely pattern of wealth distribution in an aging population. It is often said that in an aging population, the working population will end up bearing the heavy burden of supporting the older folks. This is no doubt true, but is there any silver lining for the younger folks? In an aging population, a relatively high proportion of the general population are in the older age-groups. As the population ages, the combined wealth of a relatively greater number of old Singaporeans will become concentrated in the hands of a relatively lesser number of younger Singaporeans. This is in contrast to countries with a young population, where the wealth of the recently-deceased will be divided among a greater number of living people. In a sense, this alleviates the economic hardship of the relatively younger section of the population, in supporting the relatively older section of the population.

PM Lee gave an insightful and interesting speech during the National day rally. He raised issues concerning the economy, religion, population, technology and commitment to the country. I truly believe that these issues are really important and are fundamentals to our country future progress. Especially, grooming and nurturing new leaders that are capable to lead the country to greater heights.

this boy's mouth is full of banana while he watches the National Day rally. this may be random but i thought that it's cute. xD

ps: just adding some colour to the blog. so, pardon me for the extras.
cerlyn.-