In many countries, the proportion of older people is steadily increasing. Does this trend have more positive or negative effects on the society?
Coupled with the rapid development in medical science and life quality, people are able to live longer, and the proportion of old people are rising at a steady pace. However, whether it has more positive or negative impacts is certainly a contentious one.
Granted, with the increase of senior citizens, the younger generation acquire more opportunities to spend time with their senior relatives. They could enjoy a large family gathering, sharing their happiness, sadness and problems with the their great grandparents, during which time they might occasionally acquire several pieces of valuable advice. The rich experiences of the senior members could possibly inspire the junior ones to develop a different way to cope with grumpy superiors in workplace, for example,writing a long and heart-touching email to an angry boss rather than confronting with him directly.
However, beneath the seemingly advantageous surface, tremendous negative impacts are troubling and even possibly haunting both individual families and the whole society. Chief among the problems is the huge financial burden imposed on the younger parents who have to support four or even more orderly members along with their children. They have to pay the utility bills, buy daily necessities, pay for the intimidating medical expense, or even hire nurses to help them to take care of their senior members, the expense of which could sometimes exceed their yearly income. Another negative influences of rising ratio of old people is that the development of society are slowing down. In particular, the lack of vigorous work force (beyond doubt, most of the elderly are weak in physical strength and not able to engage in labor demanding jobs) are hindering the development of social economy and industry. For example, in China, though it has the largest population in the world, there is a serious shortage of labor-intensive workers in most of areas including construction sites and factories, hindering the further advancement of country.
By way of conclusion, the problems involved in the continuously climbing proportion of aged people far outweigh its benefits, considering the undue financial pressure on families and the slower development of society.
