In many countries, the proportion of older people is increasing steadily. Do you think it is a positive or negative change to the society?

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In many countries, the trends toward fewer children and more senior citizens are proceeding at an accelerated pace. A long and healthy old age was previously a cause for celebration, but now viewed as a "burden on society". As far as I see, fears that problems will arise from an ageing population are unfounded.

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People tend to believe that the ageing of a society leads to slower growth of population size and to a shrinking workforce. The dominant way of looking at an?older society has been to see this as a problem — an increasing burden on the working population. The fact is that as the number of young people falls, organisations will find it harder to recruit from their traditional pool of school-leavers and?graduates. To tackle this problem, an increasing number of sectors and companies are now desperate to keep their highly experienced older workers. Therefore, an ageing population will by no means constitute a problem because older people should work at or beyond retirement age. Nor will it lead to a crisis of labour.

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Another widespread worry is the sufficiency of wealth available in society to sustain the retired population. Paradoxically, when people are concerned about the public expenditure on the retired population, they have ignored private transfers of time and money from the old generation to the young one. It is important to note that parents' earning capacity grows nowadays because of having fewer children. The total time they spend caring for dependents drops, and they are thus released for productive work. When they reach retirement age, they are in a stronger position with better financial security. In later years their children should receive an adequate inheritance, assisting them in turn to achieve a comfortable retirement.

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In addition to establishing a solid financial base for families, older people also have time to offer for other benefits of family and those of the community. Healthy and energetic, they are the backbone of voluntary services. Voluntary services are not worthless just because they are unpaid. Senior workers can provide families or voluntary organisations with legal, accounting, computer or other skills for free.

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As suggested above, the fear that people will suffer from the "burden" of too many elderly people is unreasonable. Any issue that arises from having a larger, older and healthier elderly population should not be viewed as a challenge for the century to come, because improving health and increased life expectancy mean that today's older population is able to lead a fuller life than any generation before them.

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