Rural population ageing in poorer countries: possible implications for rural development

Although the ageing of rural populations is now well underway in a large number of developing countries, understanding this phenomenon's social and economic implications and its integration into development plans and policies remains inadequate.This paper first outlines national levels of urban and rural ageing in the years around 1990, and then presents an overview of the main developmental challenges that rural ageing tends to produce. Particular attention is given to issues relevant to agriculture and food security. It is argued that countries must respond to the various challenges posed by rural ageing and seize the opportunity to rethink their agricultural and rural development policies in order to promote progress for people of all ages. At the same time, more information is needed about the exact nature of the linkages between rural population ageing and social, economic and environmental developments in concrete settings.Paper concludes that the evidence is accumulating that rural population ageing is now well underway in a number of poorer countries. The process is likely to lead to major, multiple effects on social organization, labour markets, agricultural production, food security, and the development process in general. However, there is nothing inevitable about these effects. At almost every point, decision-makers have options regarding the ways in which they respond to changing demographic conditions, and it will be their choices from among the gamut of possible options that will determine, along with other factors, the resulting agrarian outcomes.Population specialists now face an important task to provide decision-makers with relevant and convincing information about the exact nature of the linkages between population ageing and the various aspects of demographic, socio-cultural, economic and environmental change in concrete rural settings. Such information is urgently needed if we are to proceed from the stage of acknowledging the challenges of rural ageing to that of taking appropriate action [author]