The world’s population is getting older.

Today, almost one in seven people is over the age of 60. That represents a billion people around the world and the figure is set to double by the year 2050. The reason for this trend is that we are living longer than ever before, thanks to an improving quality of life and advances in medicine. In theory, a longer life expectancy seems like a positive development: older people have more time to spend with their grandchildren, on their hobbies or just relaxing after a lifetime of hard work. Unfortunately, in practice, there is also a downside to having an ageing population. When people live longer, governments must spend more on pensions, health care and social programmes for the lonely elderly. The cost of these services quickly adds up – but because people are also having fewer children, there are fewer people of working age to pay taxes. These two social trends combined – more older people and fewer younger people – are causing governments a headache. Where should the extra money come from? It could be taken from other public services such as schools and transport but no political party is likely to risk losing votes in this way. To solve the problem of an ageing population, governments must somehow raise more money. One way of doing this is to increase the retirement age. In fact, this is already happening in many European countries where life expectancy is high. In the past, employees in France, Germany and Spain would retire at 65; they are now expected to work until the age of 67. The UK is changing its laws to make 68 the legal retirement age. On average, people in these countries live until their early eighties so two or three years of additional work is not too much to ask. The money generated by raising the retirement age is significant, however, and can be put back into state pensions and other services. Another solution is to raise the amount of tax that each person has to pay, especially the wealthiest people. In the US, for example, it used to be the case that the wealthy paid a lot more tax than the poor as a percentage of their income. Today, that is no longer true. A recent study showed that the wealthy paid only a slightly higher, or even the same, percentage. ‘The wealthy’ does not refer to professionals such as managers and engineers – it refers to millionaires who would hardly be affected by paying a higher tax rate. It is immoral for anyone to keep for themselves more cash than they could ever spend; governments must insist that the rich make fair financial contributions. Some people might argue that a better solution is to encourage couples to have more children, which would ensure a larger working population in the future. In this way, governments would not need to increase the budget to cover the needs of the elderly. However, there are serious disadvantages to this. Firstly, the planet is already overpopulated, which is contributing to climate change. Secondly, suggesting that families have more babies is like trying to turn back time. The birth rate continues to fall as more and more women are given equal opportunities to better their education and careers, and in general have a choice whether to work or not. Each couple must be free to make their own decisions. Since populations are ageing rapidly and the birth rate is unlikely to increase, governments must urgently raise money to look after the elderly. Increasing the retirement age is a reasonable idea but it will affect every working person and be an unpopular policy. The easiest way to generate income fast is to tax the very wealthy, who will suffer the least from a change in the law. Luckily, it seems that some of them already agree; the billionaire businessman Manoj Bhargava has said, ‘Service to others seems the only intelligent choice for the use of wealth. ’