The demographic future for the U.S. and the world looks very different than the recent past in key respects. Growth from 1950 to 2010 was rapid—the global population nearly tripled, and the U.S. population doubled. However, population growth from 2010 to 2050 is projected to be significantly slower and is expected to tilt strongly to […]

The aging of populations raises concerns about the affordability of publicly funded pension and health care programs in the future. Many developed economies already expend a sizable share of their GDP on these programs. For example, public expenditures on pensions and health care currently consume about 13% of GDP in the U.S. and in excess […]

Beard, John R., Simon Biggs, David E. Bloom, Linda P. Fried, Paul Hogan, Alexandre Kalache and S. Jay Olshansky, eds. Global Population Ageing: Peril or Promise? Geneva: World Economic Forum (2011). Bloom, David E., David Canning and Günther Fink. “Implications of Population Aging for Economic Growth,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 16705 […]

About the 2013 Spring Pew Global Attitudes Survey Results for the survey are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Survey results are based on national samples. For further details on sample designs, see below. The descriptions below show the margin of sampling error based on […]

Public awareness of aging and its potential economic pitfalls varies across countries, but the view that aging is a major problem is more prevalent in countries whose populations are projected to be among the oldest in 2050, such as Japan, South Korea and Germany. People’s confidence in their ability to maintain an adequate standard of […]