Conversations on the Future 'We've got mum a robot': Expert warns against lonelier world for the elderly

She also highlights importance of staying healthy for longer as population ages

- Nirmal Ghosh

WASHINGTON By 2100, babies born today will be 78 - and will live in a world in which older people outnumber the younger.

But from Europe to Japan, this demographic change is already apparent.

According to a study published in The Lancet in July 2020, while the number of people on the planet will peak at 9.7 billion in 2064, by 2100 as many as 23 countries are expected to see their populations halve, with the global population falling to 8.8 billion.

"We're really talking about what we call age structural change," said Dr Sarah Harper, professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford and director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing.

"And that is as much about falling child-bearing as it is about falling mortality rates, late-life mortality rates," she said in the latest episode of The Straits Times' Conversations on the Future video series.