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xi INTRODUCTION Lee Hock Guan In recognition of the situation of older persons in the world, 1999 was declared as the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. Following the Second World Assembly on Ageing held in April 2002 in Madrid, Spain, the inaugural ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Social Welfare and Development, held in October 2002 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, included in its ASEAN Work Programme on Social Welfare, Family, and Population (2003–06), priorities to take into account with regard to welfare, the family and population, given the emerging challenges arising from demographic developments, particularly population ageing. Population ageing — the process by which older persons assume a proportionately larger share of the total population — is fast becoming a reality in Southeast Asia, but at much faster rates than previously experienced by developed countries. In part this is due to the huge advances made in the areas of health care knowledge, technologies and services, and as well as their accessibility by an increasingly larger segment of the population. Better control of perinatal and infant mortality, a decline in birth rates, improvements in nutrition, basic health care and control of many infectious diseases have all contributed to a Southeast Asian demographic transition revolution. In 1975, the estimated number of older persons was 18.3 million (or 5.7 per cent of the total population), but by 2000, that number had doubled to 37.3 million (or 7.1 per cent), and was projected to reach 87.9 million in 2025 (12.3 per cent).1 From 1975 to 2025, or in two generations, while the total Southeast Asian population would increase from 522.1 to 692.2 million, or by 32.6 per cent, the number of older persons would increase by 135.6 per cent. The number of older persons has been projected to reach 176.1 million or close to a quarter of the total population by 2050. These indicators clearly confirmed that the greying of Southeast Asia is becoming a reality at much faster rates than was previously experienced by 00 Ageing_East Asia Prelims 1/10/08, 10:27 AM 11 xii xii Introduction developed countries.The increase in the number of elderly people in countries such as Thailand and the Philippines will be up to 15 times higher than in the United Kingdom and Sweden in the period 1985–2020; this is part of the process known as the “compressed demographic transition”. As in the case of the developed world, women form the majority of older people, a development usually referred to as the “feminization of later life”. In virtually all Southeast Asian countries, this proportion increases with age. As Southeast Asian countries undergo rapid declines in fertility and mortality rates, they are experiencing varying stages of population ageing. The economic and social implications of ageing are directly connected to the increasing proportion of the elderly in the population as well as the increase in their absolute numbers. For example, in 2000, while Singapore had the highest proportion of the elderly — 12 per cent (170,000) of its population aged 60 years and older — Indonesia had the highest absolute number of 14 million, which was 7.2 per cent of the population. This meant that even though the elderly population in Indonesia was only 7.2 per cent in 2000, it still had an ageing problem because of the large absolute number involved, especially since a disproportionate percentage of the older population are concentrated in the rural areas. The social, economic and political implications raised by the ageing phenomenon in the region are enormous. Because of the fast speed of ageing, the region, unlike developed countries, cannot afford the luxury of time for the gradual evolution of social and structural support systems and networks for the older population. Southeast East Asian nations will need to formulate and implement without delay comprehensive policies to deal with the impending “age quake”. Studies have shown that proper policies are best implemented and the appropriate infrastructure constructed to prepare for the inevitable ageing of the population when the dependency rates are still low. This demographic window is an opportunity that should not be ignored. Fortunately, evidence suggests that nearly all Southeast Asian governments have recognized the phenomenon of population ageing and have started the processes of formulating and implementing national ageing policies. Chapters 4 to 7 examine the national ageing policies of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia andThailand respectively. However, the existing national policies in Southeast Asia, with the exception...

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