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Julian Manduca
‘It’s a man’s world’ the saying goes, but statistics may not agree, depending on which way one interprets them.
According to Malta’s National Statistics Office there will be 13,400 men and 21,900 women over the age of 75 by 2025, but even now women in that age bracket outnumber men three to two.
Fun for the men? Maybe, but an ageing female population – a trend throughout the world – presents its own problems and challenges.
According to the NSO, Malta’s population is expected to increase slightly up until 2015, and then decrease to 334,000 in 2050. The figures strongly contradict Eurostat ones that predict Malta’s population will increase to 500,000 by 2050.
Women will continue to outnumber men among our elderly in the coming years. Women live longer but the difference is set to become more pronounced. In 2010 the NSO expects Malta will be inhabited by 9,000 men and 15,000 women over the age of 75. Those will increase reaching 10,800 men and 18,000 women by 2020. The gap will be maintained and numbers will increase to at least 2050 when it is predicted Malta will have 13,400 men and 21,500 women over the age of 75.
The largest gap will be in 2035 when there will be nearly ten thousand more women than men in the 75 and over age bracket.
The reasons behind women living longer are varied and debatable, but in Malta as in the rest of the developed world substantially more men are dying of heart disease between the ages of 35 and 75 and slightly more men are dying of cancer between the ages of 65 and 85 plus, especially between 65 and 75. Both cancer and heart disease have been linked to modern lifestyles and both are much rarer in primitive societies even to date.
According to UN statistics it was estimated that in the whole world there were 214 million women aged 60 and over in 1980. However, by the year 2020, this has been projected to increase to 543 million. Ageing is a disproportionately female phenomenon.
julian@newsworksltd.com
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