World Social Report 2023 Leaving No One Behind In An Ageing World

The report takes a lifecycle approach to the ageing process. The report looks at the situation of older persons while addressing links between population ageing and selected Sustainable Development Goals, with the underlying focus on the commitment of the 2030 Agenda on leaving no one behind, promoting equitable and inclusive ageing. The report also looks at Covid-19 and its aftermath and its effects are addressed through all chapters. The report uses a social perspective and expands analysis on the social aspects of ageing--including its implications for poverty and inequality, healthcare and long-term care.

This report examines the links between inequality and other major global trends (or megatrends), with a focus on technological change, climate change, urbanization and international migration. The analysis pays particular attention to poverty and labour market trends, as they mediate the distributional impacts of the major trends selected. It also provides policy recommendations to manage these megatrends in an equitable manner and considers the policy implications, so as to reduce inequalities and support their implementation.

Greater longevity is an indicator of human progress in general. Increased life expectancy and lower fertility rates are changing the population structure worldwide in a major way: the proportion of older persons is rapidly increasing, a process known as population ageing. The process is inevitable and is already advanced in developed countries and progressing quite rapidly in developing ones. The 2007 Survey analyses the implications of population ageing for social and economic development around the world, while recognising that it offers both challenges and opportunities. Among the most pressing issues is that arising from the prospect of a smaller labour force having to support an increasingly larger older population. Paralleling increased longevity are the changes in intergenerational relationships that may affect the provision of care and income security for older persons, particularly in developing countries where family transfers play a major role. At the same time, it is also necessary for societies to fully recognise and better harness the productive and social contributions that older persons can make but are in many instances prevented from making. The Survey argues that the challenges are not insurmountable, but that societies everywhere need to put in place the policies required to confront those challenges effectively and to ensure an adequate standard of living for each of their members, while respecting and promoting the contribution and participation of all.

The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, 2021-2030 (the Decade) was endorsed by the 73rd World Health Assembly and proclaimed as a United Nations Decade by the General Assembly in December 2022. WHO and UN partners are required to report on progress in the Decade to WHA and UNGA in 2023, 2026 and 2029. Complementary to, and in support of these reports, WHO and UN partners have produced an additional external facing report in 2023, demonstrating progress made in the first two years of the Decade. The purpose of this report is to: assess the extent of progress made in the first phase of implementation of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, from 2021 to mid-2023; present contributions to the Decade being made by stakeholder groups, including Member States, UN agencies, civil society, academia, the private sector, community groups and older people themselves; and inspire and motivate stakeholders to collaborate in their continued efforts to implement the Decade at country level and scale up interventions to ensure healthy ageing.

This thoroughly revised and updated Handbook brings together an international range of contributors to highlight the deep interdependence between migration and globalisation, and explore the impact of economic, social, and political globalisation on international population flows. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on a discussion that has been intensifying and diversifying over the past 25 years. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Accurate, consistent and timely data on global trends in population age structure are critical for assessing current and future needs with respect to population ageing and for setting policy priorities to promote the well-being of the growing number and share of older persons in the population. This publication presents the highlights of the World Population Ageing 2017 report, which summarizes the trends in population ageing drawn from the latest United Nations estimates and projections of population by age and sex, as published in World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. The present Highlights includes a special focus on trends in the household living arrangements of older persons - whether alone, with a spouse or with own children - reflecting newly compiled estimates from the United Nations Database on the Living Arrangements of Older Persons, 2017.