Rapidly Aging Populations: Russia/Eastern Europe

Regional dimensions and trends in population aging: Russia/Eastern Europe Population aging is a global phenomenon and countries of Eastern European also experience rapid increase in the proportion of older people. The proportion of elderly people in the Eastern Europe is currently lower than in the European region as a whole. However this population aging is expected to continue over the next few decades, eventually leading to the convergence in the proportion of older people in the countries of Eastern and Western Europe. Aging of population is often measured through an increase in the percentage of elderly people of retirement ages. A society is considered to be relatively old when the fraction of the population aged 65+ years exceeds 8-10% (Kinsella and Velkoff 2001). According to this definition, the populations of the Eastern Europe and Russia are becoming very old, because the percentage of elderly people reached the levels of 14.2% and 13.8% correspondingly in 2005, and it is expected to increase further. The choice of the boundary for old age (65 years and over) is rather arbitrary therefore many demographers who study Eastern European countries also use 60 years cut-off (retirement age for many countries of the Eastern Europe). In this case a population is considered to be old, when the proportion aged 60+ years exceeds 10-12% (Kinsella and Velkoff 2001). Table 1 presents data on the proportion of population age sixty and over for selected countries. Note that populations of Bulgaria, Hungary and Ukraine were older than the population of the European region in 2005. In addition to these three