( situations and took a look at where th...)World faces challenge as life expectancies lengthen, scientist says

situations and took a look at where they'd end up," Tuljapurkar said. "One thing that happens right away, which nobody seems to have thought of, is that the total global population increases dramatically. From an original projection of 8 billion we end up topping out at 10 to 11 billion. In many countries, this would have an enormous, and not necessarily positive, impact. For example, the idea that China would go from 1.5 to 1.8 billion, just because of this, is a bit frightening."

On the other hand, he said, a longer-lived population could be good news for many European countries with low fertility rates. "Countries like Sweden and Italy have been having this huge debate for many years over population decline," Tuljapurkar explained. "A lot of the debate is about immigration: People have been telling them they need to increase immigration in order to keep the economy going."

However, an increase in citizenry is only one factor in determining a nation's socioeconomic health, he noted. Even countries with stable populations will see the age composition of the citizenry undergo a dramatic shift toward the elderly, who are frequently retired or disabled.

To factor in this phenomenon, Tuljapurkar examined the effects of anti-aging technologies on the national dependency ratio--the proportion of retired people (age 65 and over) to working people (age 20-65) in a population. This ratio is a crucial factor in determining Medicare and Social Security policies in the United States, he said.

Current worries over the fate of Social Security center on the impending retirement of the Baby Boom generation. By 2035, the U.S. dependency ratio is projected to double from approximately 1:5 to just above 2:5. Increased boomer lifespans will add an alarming extra weight to an already sagging system. Factoring in increased lifespans, Tuljapurkar calculated that current forecasts for dependency ratios could fall short by a factor of two--meaning that in A
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Source:Stanford University

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