AGING GEORGIAN POPULATION NOTED

World Bank gives wake-up call

 

      "Age is an opportunity no less than youth itself" - with this encouraging words, Mukesh Chawla started the presentation of a new World Bank report called From Red to Gray: The Third Transition" of Aging Populations in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. At the World Bank's office in Tbilisi Mukesh Chawla, World Bank Lead Economist and co-author of the report dwelled on the major conclusions of the study and the policy implications for the region, including for Georgia.

      The book raises an important issue of demographic transition and its various social and economic repercussions. According to the report, many countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have slowly growing or shrinking populations. As a result they will soon have populations that are among the oldest in the world. While other countries such as Japan and some Western European states have gone or are currently going through this process, the problem with Eastern Europe and the former USSR is that the incomes in these countries are still very low and the impact can be more hard-hitting.

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