Other changes include reforming social security systems in developed countries. Another is creating social safety systems in developing nations where traditional family support systems are disappearing. The report says the most cost-effective and humane thing a society can do for its older citizens is to invest in their health so they can remain active.

Researchers are warning that aging populations present challenges for governments when economic productivity is falling. This year, the government in Singapore released a song dealing with a population issue. It urges young people to produce more children to help end a drop in fertility rates.

The song is fun, but the problem is serious. By twenty-thirty, the number of older adults in Singapore will rise two hundred percent from current levels.

The government is offering to pay up to three thousand two hundred fifty dollars for each of the first two children. It will pay almost five thousand dollars for the third and fourth children.

Starting in the nineteen eighties, Asia’s young, working-age population helped the area become an economic success. But things are changing. Donghyun Park is an economist with the Asian Development Bank. He says what is happening in Singapore is also happening in other countries.

“That the share of the elderly -- those aged sixty-five plus in total population -- as well as relative to the working age population is steadily increasing across, across developing Asia. And of course, I mean Asia’s no different from the advanced economies, right, that experienced its demographic transition much earlier.”