Global Aging, Adaptation to It and Future Demographic Transformations

This chapter provides a systemic analysis of the development of the process of population and society aging during the twenty-first century. It considers achievements, challenges and conflicts that await us and the world as a whole in connection with the formation of an elderly society and the intensification of the global aging process, also the mutual influence between global aging and technological change. Grinin et al. hope that the study will be all the more relevant and important since the studies of the problem of population aging are limited. However, global aging is already an extremely important problem and it will become the most crucial problem in the future. This means that insufficient attention will result in societal tensions, crises and intergenerational conflicts as well as political and social instability. The chapter analyzes the challenges that will become even worse in the future, including a possible decline in democracy etc. Grinin et al. reveal the need for society to adapt to societal aging through the transformation of a number of its institutions. The authors outline the main features of a new type of population reproduction and new type of society, which will emerge by the end of this century.