The Ageing population Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Ageing population - Research Paper Example The study of ageing population has been important to policy makers because of its implications to the burden of the retirement system, health care provisions and caring for this population Life expectancy can also be a measure of a potential return on investment in human capital and is necessary for the calculation of various actuarial measures. Review of literature Are there really some reasons why some people age faster than others? According to researches and studies, there are really factors that lead to early ageing of populations and some of these have impact on socio economic and health consequences. In the reports of Gosh, 2011, Homeschooling website 2011, BBC News 2011, and Reuters 2011, there is evidence that people with lower education are prone to age more quickly than those with higher education. This evidence points to the researchers from Britain and the United States that examined the length of sections of DNA telomers of 450 people who took part in a long term health y study. Findings of the study showed people who did less well at school had shorter telemores suggesting they may age faster. Stibich (2009) defines telemores â€Å"as bits of â€Å"junk DNA† at the end of chromosomes that protect your real DNA every time a cell divides. What happens is that, due to how cells divide, the very last bit of a chromosome can’t be copied 100% - a little bit gets cut off. It was thought that, as cell divide, the telomeres get shorter each time, until they are gone. At that point, the â€Å"real DNA† cannot be copied anymore and the cell simply ages and no longer replicates†. Further research showed chronic HIV infection speeds up aging by as much as 20 to 30 years (Rickabaugh et al. 2011) According to WHO, the risk of HIV infliction in South Africa, shortens the lives of people wherein 10% of its population with ages 50-54 are living with HIV. On this, study of Pebody (2009) on life expectancy of people with AIDS in US is redu ced by 21 years. Comparing this with black and white’s life expectancy of those diagnosed with HIV, study showed white men have higher years of 25.5 years than black men of 19.9 years and Hispanics with 22.6 years. However, these figures showed an improvement and an increased over the 1969 figures which are relatively shorter. The socio economic consequences are some of the reasons for early ageing as seen in the report of Park of CNN (2011) that said baby boomers are aging faster than previous generations. Park posed the observations that senior population are less healthy and heavier than their parents were at their age; boomers think of themselves as young, but they’re aging physiologically faster, and more often, they are bothered with stress, obesity, health care, brain function and arthritis Methodology The study will use exploratory research in order to discover general information on the ageing population. When the goal of a study is to gain an insight to a par ticular topic or situation, an exploratory research is an appropriate design for the study (KnowThis.com). This approach has been selected because the research is new and it is hard to pinpoint the research direction. So in using this, result of study may be used for a more formal research direction. Data collection will be gathered from secondary sources of published articles and studies. Discussions A comparison of life expectancy in selected countries is presented in Table 1 to show differences among developed, emerging and third world countries. Table 1. Demographic comparison, by country 2011 Country POPULATION AGE STRUCTRE65 Yrs & above FERT.