Silver service Concerns about ageing society 'ignore huge opportunities'

While pundits and pressure groups have raised concerns over falling fertility rates, highlighting the challenges for economies and healthcare systems, others are more upbeat, arguing the rise of the "silver economy" brings new opportunities for growth.

- Nicola Davis

Prof Sarah Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, said two-thirds of the world’s countries already had fertility rates below the replacement level needed to maintain the same size population in the next generation, and that the ageing of most populations was inevitable.

But she said that brought with it certain positives. Harper said: “This is a success in so much as every baby that is born will have the opportunity - or should have the opportunity - to be highly educated, healthy and live a long, healthy life.”

While acknowledging there would be people living into their 80s and 90s who would become frail and need care, Harper said the main opportunity was to capitalise on the increasing health and education of older adults, especially those aged 50 to 70. She said: “There are some challenges [to an ageing population], but there are also huge opportunities and rather than try and resist it, or stop it, or divert it, we should be looking for those opportunities, because we have this massive cohort of healthy, active, older, creative adults.