The furore created by the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) taxation proposal has brought to the fore the core issue of what we are doing as a nation to address the looming problem of a large elderly population. Although there is a lot of enthusiasm around our young demographic, there also needs to be acknowledgment of the fact that with over 110 million people above the age of 60, we are home to the second largest elderly population in the world.
The average life expectancy in India has increased by 3.5 years every decade over the past three decades. And this number is likely to go up to 300 million elderly by the year 2050, and the percentage of elderly population will increase to 15% from 8% today. There are financial issues related to the rising elderly population that will need to addressed, and soon. Further, social attitudes of life after retirement are changing leading to increasing financial outlays. A manifestation of this is the quality of medical care being sought.
