Don’t leave Asia’s ageing debate until it’s too late
As the global gap between healthspan and lifespan widens to almost a decade, an ageing Asia’s health question is increasingly a business one
Last month, Japan’s internal affairs ministry released its yearly data ahead of Respect for the Aged Day. People aged 65 and over now make up a record 29.6 per cent of the population. But the figure I keep coming back to was this: 9.43 million Japanese workers were 65 or older last year, about 13.8 per cent of everyone with a job.
The Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Population Ageing is set to be held in Hangzhou, China, later this month. The organisers – HelpAge International, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the China National Committee on Ageing – point out that ageing is reshaping labour markets and public finances across the region. But we also need to consider what happens to a family or a company when the person holding it together gets sick at 45.
I can answer that one. At 37, after building companies across three countries, I ended up in intensive care. That experience is why I now spend my working life on prevention.
