Aging rapidly
Currently, some 11% of Taiwan’s population is 65 years of age or older. But we are aging rapidly and are forecast to cross the 14% threshold for an “aged society” in 2017.
Although an estimated 10% of Taiwan’s 2.6 million elderly suffer some form of disability, the other 90% are healthy, mobile and capable of taking care of themselves.
In the past, senior support groups, both governmental and charitable, tended to focus their efforts on caring for disabled seniors and largely ignored the needs of the much greater numbers of healthy elderly. That’s begun to change as organizations have come to recognize that the old saw about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure applies to senior care as well.
Over the last decade Europe and the Americas have shifted their eldercare policies to focus on support for active aging, that is, maximizing seniors’ opportunities for health, participation in society, and security.
But how do we age actively?
Lin Wan-I, a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Social Work, explains that the three pillars of active aging are health, participation and security.
“Participation is a key component of the active aging discussions within the European Union.” Lin says that its core tenets are keeping people active and productive in their later years through activities such as work, volunteering, education, and training.
The experience of Japan, the world’s most aged nation since 2000, offers food for thought.
Japan has been subsidizing the establishment of local “silver human resources centers” since 1980. These centers encourage seniors to take part-time work in their communities tidying parks, gardening, tending parking lots, doing carpentry, greeting guests, and translating. The work provides the elderly with a little pocket money, while also helping to reduce their healthcare costs.
Wu Yu-chin, secretary-general of the Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly, notes that the healthcare costs of the 780,000 members of Japan’s 1,597 silver human resources centers average about ¥220,000 per year (roughly NT$66,000), or about one-third of the ¥640,000 (roughly NT$192,000) per annum average for all seniors.
However, putting retired Taiwanese seniors back to work requires first changing the deep-rooted notion that seniors who hold jobs are stealing the livelihoods of young people.
According to a survey by the Ministry of the Interior, roughly 200,000 individuals over the age of 65 held jobs in 2009, accounting for 11.17% of the workforce. Of these, 51.3% worked in farming, forestry, aquaculture, or animal husbandry, 14.8% in the service sector, and 11.2% in unskilled labor.
Figures from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics put Taiwanese seniors’ labor participation rate in 2012 at 8.1%, well below that of Korea (30.6%), Japan (19.9%) and Singapore (17.6%).
Advancing into our later years means embarking on a new kind of life, one in which we can choose to delight in our grandchildren and other pastimes, or simply take it easy.