Australia is home to 558,000 people aged over 85 years.
In fact, in the last 20 years, this age group has actually doubled in size.
However, this is absolutely nothing compared to what’s about to hit us according to leading demographer Simon Kuestenmacher who shared his insights in The New Daily
He said:
"In just 13 years, we’ll have to look after more than one million Australians aged over 85.
Remember, 2035 is as far in the future as 2009 is in the past.
This is happening soon.
Another 18 years (2063) and we will have reached two million people over 85.
By 2080 we will have added yet another million.
About half of the population aged 85-plus requires serious care services.
Meaning they need help with core activities and have several health issues that need attention.
Sometimes this care is provided for free by a family member but usually professionals need to get involved.
Ageing is labour-intensive."
The major concern
The main concern for this is how many of our future elderly will have saved enough money in their superannuation accounts to pay for their own retirement.
The problem is, since most retirees will not be able to fund their golden years, it will put a strain on Australia's healthcare system, the pension system and therefore the taxpayer who will have to fund this.
Mr Kuestenmacher commented:
"Wealthy retirees have decent super balances, and additional money in the bank, they are homeowners and, quite frankly, can afford to grow old.
The growing share of elderly who had low-income careers and don’t own a home is a major concern.
They will run out of cash eventually.
This means we need to subsidise their retirement years through the pension scheme – potentially for decades.
We are not quite sure how big of issue poverty in old age will be, but we know it’s going to be a huge problem.
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We have a duty of care for our elderly, but they will be a huge financial burden.
To shoulder that burden, we must grow the economy."
In other words, owning your home without a mortgage in your latter years is critical to having a level of financial security.
Especially with rents rising more than the increase in the pension
Greater demand for health jobs
Mr Kuestenmacher noted that demand for health jobs will only rise:
"We are already committing 15 per cent of our workforce to health care and social assistance.
Four decades ago, that was only 8 per cent.
Our current population of 25.4 million people (just over half a million of whom are aged over 85) gets serviced by two million healthcare workers.
By all accounts these workers are overworked, and we would need an even higher number of workers in the sector already.
We must overhaul the aged care sector and the entire healthcare system to make them attractive places to work.
Burn out, odd hours, overwork are all too common.
The recent reports about aged care workers leaving the sector because of poor work conditions might be a dark foreshadowing of what lies ahead."
What's ahead?
Obviously, Australia needs to grow its health workforce in a time of a universal skills shortage.
For Mr Kuestenmacher, automation would be the answer.
He further commented:
"Forget any talk about automation killing jobs.
From now on it will be workers that are in short supply, not jobs.
Automation across all industries is needed to free up workers to enter the health field.
The ageing of the population occurs gradually – one person, one real human, at a time.
If we fail to fully shake up and reinvent the way we provide health care and assistance to our oldest Australians, we ensure that hundreds of thousands of people will have a horrible last decade or so of their lives."
Source of charts and commentary: The Stats Guy, The New Daily
