INTRODUCTION

The global population grew from one billion to six billion between 1804 and 1999, with the highest rate of growth (2 per cent) occurring as late as the 1960s. The world's most recent billion took only 12 years to accomplish and life expectancy at birth grew from about 30 years two centuries ago to a global average of 66 years today (United Nations 1999, 2001; Riley 2001). The remarkable human population growth for the past 200 years can be, in part, attributed to the fact that more and more people survive to older ages. The demographic transition of human societies, beginning in the 19th and 20th centuries, is continuing well into the new millennium (United Nations, 2002). With the confluence of lowered fertility and mortality rates in most countries around the world, the global population is ageing at an extraordinary scale.

All societies throughout the world, be it the more developed or the less developed, are no exception to this trend. In the past, the growth of the older population was exclusively a problem faced by the more developed countries. That is no longer true today. The structural change in the global population is further complicated by the accelerated rate of ageing in the less developed societies that are taking a shorter and shorter time to make the demographic transition. In fact, since 1955, the rate of ageing in the less developed regions grew to almost three times that of the more developed regions. Many third world countries are ageing faster at lower development levels and there is less time for developing nations to adjust and react to the rapid demographic transition in their population. In the World Population Ageing: 1950–2050, published by the Population Division of the United Nations, it was concluded that: