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Population Ageing in Sri Lanka Challenges and Opportunities By A.T.P.L.Abeykoon Ph.D.

Population Ageing in Sri Lanka Challenges and Opportunities By A.T.P.L.Abeykoon Ph.D. Senior Fellow Institute for Health Policy.

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Population Ageing in Sri Lanka Challenges and Opportunities By A.T.P.L.Abeykoon Ph.D.

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  1. Population Ageing in Sri Lanka Challenges and Opportunities By A.T.P.L.Abeykoon Ph.D. Senior Fellow Institute for Health Policy

  2. Population Ageing is an inevitable outcome of a positive demographic trend resulting from a continuous decline in fertility and rise in Life expectancy leading to changes in the population age structure where the proportion of elderly increases.

  3. Population Ageing Indices, 2010-2050

  4. Challenges • As the population ages, fewer working age persons will be available to provide long-term care for a large number of elderly. • Although Sri Lanka provides a comprehensive social security system for the elderly, the coverage of current schemes is limited to a minority of the working age population, the benefits are inadequate and their financial sustainability is questionable. • Although majority of Sri Lankan elderly live with their children, a recent study suggests that as income and education increase, co-residence with children may decline.

  5. Seventy five percent of elderly living alone are women. The majority of them are widowed with little education and report worse health status than men. • On an average one fifth of old people in Sri Lanka need help to perform activities of daily living such as eating, dressing, toileting or bathing. • In Sri Lanka, data on elder abuse and neglect are not available. However, the increase in the suicide rate among the elderly suggest that it may be partly due to abuse and neglect at home and institutions. • As the ratio of old people to working people in the family grows among low income households, poverty rates would increase considerably.

  6. The proportion of elderly as heads of households has been growing. In 2001, 12 percent of men and 25 women were over 65 years of age. • Continuing the current public sector pension scheme to less than 3 percent of the population with over 4 percent of GDP by 2020 would not be economically attractive. • The decline of the daughter potential ratio from 2.8 in 2010 to 1.6 in 2025 will result in an increasing need for externally provided support services to assist families to care for the elderly. • While the elderly are more ill on average than the young, the increase in the elderly might not result in an equivalent increase in the burden of illness, owing to morbidity compression.

  7. However, a recent study at the IHP shows that demographic change will add 0.4 percent of GDP to health system resource requirements by 2025. • The study further noted that while ageing will have an impact on overall health expenditures, changes in utilization, productivity and prices are likely to be far more significant from a policy perspective. • Labour force growth being one of the factors of economic growth, the slowdown of labour force growth and its shrinking after 2030 may contribute to a slowdown in GDP growth.

  8. Opportunities • There are 5 million young persons (age 15-29) in the Sri Lankan population who are also educated. This “demographic bonus” can be effectively used for economic development. It is an opportunity that should not be missed. • There is a lead time of 15 years before Sri Lanka’s population would reach 20% of the total population. This is an opportunity to prepare for rapid ageing beyond the year 2025. • With six decades of free education and health care, Sri Lankans reaching age 60 today are more educated and healthy. Opportunities should be created to enable them to be economically active at least for another 10 years.

  9. The rising health care costs due to ageing could be considerably reduced by productivity increases in the health system where the same volume of services could be delivered at lower costs. • A drag on economic growth created by population ageing could be countered by increases in labour quality or increased labour force participation particularly among women. • In the age group 60-69 years, 50% of males and 13% of females were economically active in 2001. Opportunities should be created to enable a higher proportion of participation of the elderly particularly of women in the labour force.

  10. Information from the following publications have been used in this presentation: Ravi P. Rannan-Eliya 2008. Population Ageing and Health Expenditure: Sri Lanka 2001-2101. Research Studies Series 2, Institute for Health Policy, Colombo. World Bank. 2008. Sri Lanka: Addressing the Needs of an Aging Population, Human Development Department, South Asia Region. A.T.P.L. Abeykoon.2000. “Ageing and the Health Sector in Sri Lanka”, lead article, The Ceylon Medical Journal, 45(2). A.T.P.L. Abeykoon and Ruwanthi Elwalagedera.2008. “Emerging Social Issues of Population Ageing in Sri Lanka”, Economic Review, April/May. Colombo.

  11. Thank you for your Attention

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