TIRANA, Aug. 26 – The number older persons in Albaniais expected to make up a growing share of the population in the future. According to the latest ‘World Population Ageing 2019’ report by the United Nations, individuals over 65 years old will comprise almost half of the number of all employees in Albania.
Based on the report, the increase of economic old-age dependency ratio is related to the aging of the population and the decrease of the fertility rate. In 2019, 409 thousand people over the age of 65 were registered in Albania (14 percent of the total population), but in 2050, the number of old people over 65 is estimated to be 617 thousand, or 25 percent of the total population.
Currently, there are 23.2 elderly people aged 65 and over, for every 100 people of working age (20-64 years old). By 2050, this indicator will almost double,which may negatively affect the pension scheme and might make it increasingly difficult to find young people in the labor market.
Furthermore, the UN predicts that more and more older women will be left alone; in 2019 there were 92.3 males per 100 females aged over 65 years, yet in 2050, this indicator is expected to drop to 88.3.
The report says that recent studies show that an aging population will increase financial pressure on older support systems. In countries where public transfers are high, including many countries in Europe and Latin America, an aging population will increase fiscal pressure on public transfer systems, especially if current tax and benefit patterns remain unchanged.
The report further emphasizes that population aging is a global phenomenon. Almost every country in the world is experiencing an increase in both the size and the percentage of older people in the population. In 2019, there were 703 million people aged 65 and over in the global population. That number is projected to double to 1.5 billion by 2050.
Overall, the number of people aged 80 or older nearly tripled between 1990 and 2019, rising from 54 million to 143 million – projected to triple again between 2019 and 2050 to reach 426 million.
Between 1990 and 2019, the number of people aged 80 and over doubled in all regions except Europe and North America and tripled in four of the eight regions. Between 2019 and 2050, the number of people aged 80 or over is projected to mark the largest percentage increase in East and Southeast Asia and in North Africa and West Asia.
