Foreign Assistance in an Aging World

AT THE International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey, Mexico, last March, the Bush administration promised it would request a $5 billion increase in the U.S. foreign assistance appropriations for those countries making the strongest possible commitment to development. A month later, the UN Second World Assembly on Aging in Madrid, Spain, cast a spotlight on a global trend that has been accelerating for a decade: the graying of the world's population. Both a robust increase in money for development and an acknowledgement of what has long been the reality of popu lation aging were major departures from past U.S. policy and recent global health priorities. Headlines did not link the two meetings, but they should have. Fundamental changes in basic population trends and public health are transforming much of the developing world. Over the past four decades, discussions of health problems in developing nations have centered on communicable diseases and the needs of children and vulnerable women of childbearing age. Accordingly, these diseases and this limited population have been the focus of the health care pro grams supported by foreign assistance. But this focus needs to change. Over the next 20 years, fertility will drop sharply in the developing world, and the number of children under the age of five will decline both

Development economics · Economics · Foreign policy · International trade · Political science · Politics · Global Health Care Issues · Law

• Perspectives on science and technology in development

  Open Access•Rodney W Nichols•Technology in Society•2007

  Add to list

• The Prevention of Global Chronic Disease

  Henry Greenberg, Susan U Raymond et al.•American Journal of Public Health•2011

  Add to list