Politics of the Life-Span: A critique of the demography of the life span and its impact on social policy. John A. Vincent University of Exeter. U.K. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Politics of the Life-Span: A critique of the demography of the life span and its impact on social policy. John A. Vincent University of Exeter. U.K.

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Title: Politics of the Life-Span: A critique of the demography of the life span and its impact on social policy. John A. Vincent University of Exeter. U.K.


1
Politics of the Life-Span A critique of the
demography of the life span and its impact on
social policy.John A. VincentUniversity of
Exeter. U.K.
2
Projections
  • Projections of future demographic trends in terms
    of ageing populations are crucial in the process
    of forming public policies, insitutional and
    commercial strategies.
  • there are those who believe that immortality is
    within reach (Futurists)
  • those who believe life expectancy will rise to
    100 years or more in this century (Optimists)
    and
  • those who believe that life expectancy is
    unlikely to exceed an average of around 85 years
    in the absence of radical advances in the control
    of the aging process (Realists) (Carnes and
    Olshansky 2007367)
  • Elsewhere I have written on the problems
    associated with the immortalist / futurist
    position. Here I present a radical deconstruction
    of a highly influential optimist position.

3
Oeppen, Jim and James W.Vaupel (2002) Broken
Limits to Life Expectancy Science 296 (10) May
2002, pp.1029-32. www.sciencemag.org
  • Oeppen and Vaupel (2002) state that there is a
    very high linear correlation in the historical
    trend for female life expectancy in the
    record-holding country
  • This trend has risen at a steady pace of 3 months
    per year over the last 160 years. Japanese
    females life expectancy currently 85 it will only
    take another 45 years to take it (or some other
    record breaking country) to 100.
  • They argue that all previous attempts to specify
    maximum life expectancy have failed and conclude
    there are no limits to life expectancy.

4
Oeppen and Vaupel (2002)
  • People are set to live increasingly long lives,
    and reaching 100 will soon be "commonplace", say
    experts "As the cost of pensions spirals there's
    mounting pressure... to raise the age for
    retirement "The acute problem for society will
    be how to look after all the older people (Heap,
    BBC Thursday, 9 May, 2002 )
  • Health crisis looms as life expectancy soars
    Average ageing forecasts far too low, say
    scientists (Meek, Guardian May 10, 2002).
  • The original paper was written as an attack on
    persisteantly over-conservative assumptions about
    future life expectancy.
  • However, their polemical project became hardened
    into taken for granted alarmist facts about
    future population ageing.

5
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6
Critique of Oeppen and Vaupel.Extrapolation.
  • Mathematic projection without a clear theoretical
    base mistakes correlation for cause.
  • The paper contains no developed theory as to why
    life expectancy will continue to grow without
    limitation.
  • Insofar as this point is theorised at all, they
    refer to continuously occurring gains in medical
    knowledge.
  • They say they do not believe people will become
    immortal but without any theoretical underpinning
    they are unable to comment on when and how their
    prediction will cease to be valid.
  • We could use the same correlation and show, on
    the basis of Oeppen and Vaupels analysis, that
    life expectancy was zero in 1660.
  • The logic of the extrapolation used by Oeppen and
    Vaupel could also be used to apply to Olympic
    running speeds. This conclusion would be equally
    wrong.

7
Critique of Oeppen and Vaupel. Biological limits
  • The Biology of ageing has been undergoing rapid
    change in the last decade with new findings and
    new theories.
  • The significance of these findings for the
    potentiality of devising methods to control, slow
    or reverse the fundemental ageing process is
    controversial.
  • However, their is a clear consensus within the
    bio-gerontological community that the are no
    current techniques capable of extending the
    maximal human life span.
  • Today, aging and death are viewed as the
    inadvertent but inevitable byproducts of the
    degradation of biological structures and
    processes that evolved for growth, development,
    and reproduction rather than for extended
    operation. These structural and functional
    constraints exist at every level of biological
    organization (cells, tissues, organs, and organ
    systems) within the individual, and their
    existence imposes practical limits on the life
    span of individuals and the life expectancy of
    populations. Carnes and Olshanski 2002 p.510

8
Critique of Oeppen and Vaupel. choosing extremes
  • The use of the most extreme longevity at any
    particular date and projecting that forward
    almost inevitably slides from being thought of as
    a projection of an extreme to a prediction about
    future life expectancy in general.
  • World population as a whole is immune to the
    trends revealed in each of Oeppen and Vaupels
    specific cases. Namely an s shaped curve in
    which secular decline follows an acceleration in
    life expectancy gains.
  • It is critical that we do not lose sight, as so
    many commentators have, that the projections
    refer to a succession of extremes, they do not
    represent the trajectory of any measure of
    central tendency (an average life expectancy) or
    the any single population.
  • The projection may prove valid but tell us
    nothing at all about average life expectancy in
    any particular population in the future.
  • The most important factor in 20th century gains
    in life expectancy has been the decline in infant
    mortality.
  • It is at least a possibility that further
    advances in longevity at the oldest ages, even
    though advancing at the moment, will be
    particularly hard to achieve in the future. This
    is shown by the trends to declining gains in
    longevity in Japan.

9
  • Source Statistics and Information Department,
    Minister's Secretariat, Ministry of Health and
    Welfare, Vital Statistics of Japan.

10
Critique of Oeppen and Vaupel. segmentation of
populations.
  • It is also to be expected that highly selective
    groups will continue in the future to show rapid
    gains in extreme longevity.
  • The concentration within demography on the
    Japanese island of Okinawa is a further example
    of how demographic extremes have become used to
    fuel debates about population ageing in general.
  • If Oeppen and Vaupel were to control for not only
    gender and country, but for social class, their
    correlation might be extended.
  • Those deep frozen corpses in the care of the
    Cryonics corporation awaiting the breakthroughs
    in Biology to be able to resuscitate them tend to
    be very wealthy U.S. males.

11
Data sources reliability and definitions.
  • Can bureaucratic and institutional procedures in
    different countries over a 160 year period
    consistently and reliably record the same vital
    statistics. Age at death, numbers of live births
    are two features which are open to cultural and
    historical variation in interpretation and
    accuracy in official records.
  • Life tables used for calculating life expectancy
    make assumptions about the span of the oldest age
    category.
  • Age specific mortality rates in the first year of
    life are critical to calculating the standard
    measure of life expectancy at birth. However, in
    historical and cultural terms what is recorded as
    a birth (as opposed to other categories such as
    still birth, miscarriage, or not recorded at all)
    is very varied. Compared to contemporary practice
    there is likely to have been an under-recording
    of infant mortality rates in the past.
  • Further in many cultures, including Japan, there
    has been a greater tendency to disfavour female
    births and less likelihood to record them and
    strive strenuously to keep them alive.

12
The cohort problem.
  • Current increases in life expectancy are viewed
    by some as a cohort phenomenon not necessarily a
    trend attributable to future ageing populations.
  • Finch and Crimmins (2004), working from the
    immunological theory of ageing argue on the basis
    of historical data from Sweden that the ability
    of people in the twentieth century to provide
    children with a relatively infection free
    environment, as well as issues about childhood
    nutrition, are an important factor in changes in
    later life mortality experienced as the century
    progressed.
  • However, influence of this factor would not be
    replicated by further gains in life expectancy
    for subsequent cohorts. A finding which is
    consistent with the predominant s shaped
    pattern of gains in life expectancy.
  • Other researchers have questioned the long term
    significance in the rise in childhood obesity,
    particularly linking it through epigenetic
    processes to increased late life diabetes and
    increased risk of mortality.

13
Demographic projections and policy makers.
  • The concepts and methods of forecasting future
    numbers of older people are constructed through
    social processes including the activities of
    professional bodies and academic disciplines.
  • For the actuaries their projections have very
    specific financial consequences. This tends to
    mean that although they compete with each other
    over identifying trends and market opportunities
    in particular segments of the population, they
    tend to come together in formulating views about
    the future national trends.
  • One of the key debates in the consultation on
    revisions to U.K. life tables in 2004 were about
    the relative merits of using extrapolation
    techniques as opposed to decomposition
    techniques. The latter involve examining changes
    in to the probability of specific causes of death
    and aggregating them into an age specific final
    figure.
  • Such demographic concepts dependency ratio and
    life expectancy contain embedded within them
    the issues, perceptions, cultural understanding
    of the social groups who develop and use them.
    The terminology employed in these debates has
    ideological as well as technical functions
  • It is only possible to fully understand these
    scientific debates about predictions of future
    longevity if they are located in a context of
    political economy. How these experts and their
    expertise fit into global society.

14
Should age categories be thought of as fixed?
  • To refuse to criticise the notion of an ageing
    population, to accept this kind of calculation
    and the fixedness of age categories, is simply an
    admission that the threshold for old age has not
    evolved for more than 200 years and will not
    change for the next fifty, that the starting
    point of 60 years is immutable. It implies that
    the significance of age does not evolve
    historically, that it does not constitute an
    historical variable. The different ages in life
    childhood, adolescence and old age have
    inspired many works, but the thresholds defining
    them appear to have escaped historical
    development. (Bourdelais 1998110-111)

15
Ideological framework for demographic concerns.
  • We can ask critical questions about which
    population changes become social issues - who is
    defining those problems and to what purpose?
  • There were concerns in the first part of the 20th
    century about declines in fertility, loss of
    population in war and the possibility of falling
    populations.
  • In the thirty years following the second world
    war the major concerns were population growth.
    Population time-bombs, it was argued, were
    waiting to blow up economic progress and
    environmental stability.
  • In the last twenty years the time bomb has again
    become that of an ageing population. Fears about
    population have shifted from over-population to
    under-population - too many babies to too many
    old folk.
  • Historically different elites have identified
    particular demographic changes as a threat, and
    their ideologies can identify not only the cause
    but also the moral responsibility for these
    threats. These ideologies, having defined the
    problem, imply courses of action. Powerful elites
    select tools to exert control to tackle the
    perceived crises.. In the 20C there have been
    strong links between demography, eugenics and
    social engineering.

16
Political economy of population
  • This changing demographic agenda is best
    understood as reflecting ideological concerns of
    dominant elites economic, military, political
    and financial.
  • National and global economic elites want labour
    for their enterprises and customers for their
    products. In general terms, if demographic
    expansion promotes economic expansion all well
    and good, but if rapid growth leads to
    instability, then concerns emerge.
  • Military elites are concerned about military
    manpower for themselves and their enemies, (c.f.
    CIA 2001).
  • Political elites need to sustain state control
    and thus observe, enumerate and manipulate
    populations.
  • The elites who control the multinational firms in
    the global finance industry have a specific set
    of interests in the success and expansion in the
    management of the resources generated by funded
    pension schemes.

17
The agenda of the global finance industry
  • The OECD (1998) Policy Brief states that
    population ageing could threaten future economic
    growth and prosperity and suggests that yet
    greater reform. They identify the following
    questions as crucial
  • Will it continue to be possible to share
    societies resources between the working
    generation and its dependent non-working members
    in ways that do not give rise to unacceptable
    societal and inter-generational conflicts?
  • How can the contribution of older people to
    society and economic prosperity be enhanced?
  • How should pension, health and long-term care
    best be reformed?
  • Which changes in the financial infrastructure are
    needed to support the development of funded
    pension systems?
  • To what extent will ageing OECD countries be able
    to improve their well-being through growing trade
    in goods and services and assets, in particular
    with younger, faster-growing non-OECD countries?
    (OECD 19981)
  • But these questions, from the point of view of
    the dominant agenda, are rhetorical. The ideology
    of pension fund capitalism dictates that the
    answers are obviously that older people should
    expect less, everyone will have to contribute
    more towards pensions, people will have to work
    longer for their pensions, the private sector
    should be left to manage the funds, and we better
    rely on the US to make sure the younger states do
    not step out of line.
  • This and similar approaches tend to leave out of
    the equation issues of economic growth and
    economic redistribution which have been critical
    to the successful establishment of pension
    systems in the 20C.

18
Conclusion
  • It is therefore not surprising that Oeppen and
    Vaupels paper met with such a ready audience
    from powerful social groups in the global economy
    and by re-iteration became reified into the facts
    of population ageing.
  • What the paper was able to do was legitimate the
    interests of those who wished to create market
    opportunities by dismantling state based PAYG
    pension scheme by attaching the apparent
    credibility of numerical demographic science to
    an explosive statistic.
  • What we should not allow is the political and
    economic debates about priorities for pension
    systems and economic support for elderly people
    to be sidelined by apparently technical arguments
    about population dynamics. Any demographic
    theory like any scientific theory is only a good
    as the assumptions and methods on which it is
    based.

19
This presentation, and various papers can be
viewed athttp//www.people.exeter.ac.uk/JVincen
t/
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