Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The growing concern over the plight of the aging population in developed economies, such as Japan, has directed the country’s strategic plan in approaching social and economic development. The increasing number of older persons globally has created the demand from respective governments to redesign its policies and programs in order to address the current and future needs of the aging population. The approaches to respond to the concerns of older persons offer a very promising opportunity for new markets to emerge; however, the private sector has not fully taken this route due to the immense risk and high investment required by such endeavors even with existing policies in support of the aging population. Given such choice of the market not to pour in investment in order to address the aging population concerns, this paper uses Weimer and Vining’s arguments (2011) as to how market failure will occur if investments are not made in the market now. With these observations, there is a need for the government to intervene. It needs to develop innovative policies that can stir-up investments from the market and make it more responsive to the aging issues in an economy. Japan, for example, ranked first in the Top Ten Countries with the most Aged Population in 2015, and has been regarded as the “first country where older adults exceed 30% of the population.” It is the only Asian country among the ten countries which are mostly from Europe and North America. Thus, Japan has not failed its aging population as it has put so much effort in developing age-responsive policies and measures to enable a more inclusive approach to ageing. With these emerging challenges on aging in the Philippines, we need to properly prepare for the rise of the aging population. Thus, through science and technology, older persons will be able to live a life they can value.