Aging Population

From India's narrowing demographic window and Boeing 737 MAX safety concerns to capital-flow risks, Carrefour's return and AI's social costs, today's opinions examine long-term structural shifts

India is projected to move from an aged to a super-aged society in 16 years, as emerging economies face rising pension and healthcare costs at lower income levels

India's 60-plus population is set to rise to 347 mn by 2050 from 149 mn in 2022, driving demand for senior communities that combine housing, healthcare and wellness as social isolation rises

Women account for nearly 88 per cent of Japan's centenarians, with 94,298 aged 100 or older, compared with 13,379 men, according to the latest data by Japan's health ministry

The Union Budget for 2026-27 announced measures to strengthen the care ecosystem, including the expansion of geriatric and allied services, and programmes to train 150,000 multiskilled caregivers

With more than one in five residents aged 60 or above and fertility well below replacement level, Kerala is confronting the challenges of an ageing population before the rest of India

India’s fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level for the first time, raising questions about the country’s demographic future. Does this mean India’s population will start shrinking? In t

As fertility rates falls below replacement level, rising costs of housing, education and childcare, alongside changing aspirations and delayed marriage, are reshaping family size decisions

From cash incentives to calls for national duty, governments deployed every tool to boost births, but declining fertility proved far harder to reverse than expected

Latest SRS Bulletin shows India's fertility rate has fallen to 1.9, below replacement level, exposing a widening regional divide

From home care bills to insurance gaps, why Budget 2026 matters for families supporting ageing parents

From ancient times until today, an enormous population has been a foundational way for China to project its strength. But anxiety about managing so many mouths has always loomed. China has a population of 600 million people, and we must never forget this fact, Mao Zedong said in 1957, shortly before setting off a calamitous famine. China's masses, though, are getting to be less massive. And that's a problem. Birth rate numbers released Monday, the lowest since Mao's Communists established the People's Republic in 1949, are the latest development in a millennia-long struggle in China, where producing children and refreshing the population of the young have been central to the national conversation since the country's earliest days. China's population stands at 1.404 billion today, down 3 million from the previous year. And the central government's challenge remains much as it has always been: to manage a citizenry that both enhances the country's strength and claims enormous ...

How do you convince a population to have more babies after generations of a policy that limited families to just one? A decade after ending China's longtime, one-child policy, authorities are pushing a whole range of ideas and policies to try and encourage more births, ranging from cash subsidies to taxing condoms. The efforts haven't paid off yet. At least, that is what population figures released Monday show for what is now the world's second-most populous nation. China's population of 1.4 billion continued to shrink, marking the fourth straight year of decrease, new government statistics show. The total population in 2025 stood at 1.404 billion, which was 3 million less than the previous year. The statistics illustrate the stark demographic pressures the country faces. The number of new babies born was just 7.92 million in 2025, a decline of 1.62 million, or 17%. The latest birth numbers show the slight tick upwards in 2024 was not a lasting trend. Births declined for seven year

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The report pointed to a range of factors driving the fall in the birth rate - from shifts in social norms to a reduction in women's career earnings from having a baby

With the Chinese society aging and the slowing economy, the middle class is starting to argue over money as well, tearing apart long-held social norms such as family harmony and filial duty

For a quarter century, President Vladimir Putin has faced the spectre of Russia's shrinking and aging population. In 1999, a year before he came to power, the number of babies born in Russia plunged to its lowest recorded level. In 2005, Putin said the demographic woes needed to be resolved by maintaining "social and economic stability. In 2019, he said the problem still haunted the country. As recently as Thursday, he told a Kremlin demographic conference that increasing births was crucial for Russia. Putin has launched initiatives to encourage people to have more children -- from free school meals for large families to awarding Soviet-style hero-mother medals to women with 10 or more children. Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and even more children, Putin said in 2023. Let's preserve and revive these wonderful traditions. Having many children and a large family must become the norm. At first, births in Russia grew with its economic prosperity, f

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While China's new payout is its boldest pro-birth move yet, it may not counter the deep economic and social pressures driving China's demographic decline

India, China, the US, Indonesia, and Pakistan together account for approximately 46 per cent of the world's population