2023-08-20 04:00:16
“Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere”exclaimed Jacques Chirac at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002. Twenty years later, it would be just as legitimate to add: “Our house is aging and we are looking elsewhere”as the certainty of global warming is matched only by the inevitability of the aging of the population.
If it is impossible to predict the level of interest rates in six months or the weather in eight days, we know on the other hand to the comma the number of people who will be aged 85 and over in 2050. And for good reason : baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965 are potentially the nonagenarians of the years 2035-2055.
But not all the “old people” will be at the same time and under the same conditions. While the number of “85 years and over” stagnates more or less between 2020 and 2030, this plain stage will be followed by a real demographic “Alpe-d’Huez”, since the “85 years and over” will suddenly pass between 2030 and 2050 from 2.5 million to 4.8 million – an increase of +85% in twenty years. Unheard of in human history!
Especially since during the current decade 2020-2030, another challenge is at stake: that of the explosion of “75-84 year olds”, whose number will increase from 4 million to 6 million by 2030 (+ 50%). Here again, a completely unprecedented phenomenon in its magnitude.
To these two periods – before and after 2030 – and to these two demographic phenomena – explosion in the number of “75-84 year olds”, then of “85 year olds and over” – correspond two types of public policies.
Horizon 2030
The first consists in allowing “75-84 year olds” to maintain their independence for as long as possible by benefiting from suitable housing (10,000 seniors die each year from falls in the home, hence the good news of the launch in January 2024 of MaPrimeAdapt’), by safeguarding social ties (500,000 elderly people live in a situation of isolation and “social death”), by evolving in a benevolent urban environment (adapted transport and street furniture, secure roads, access to shops, to senior residences or inclusive housing…).
The second requires anticipating solutions by 2030 to meet the challenges of dependency: creation of establishments and services, hiring of additional staff, better solvency of beneficiaries and caregivers… In this area, a law of programming – that MP (Socialist Party) Jérôme Guedj recently proposed to the National Assembly with the support of the government – would allow forward-looking and cross-partisan work.
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