Italy’s love for life? Apparently, it's gone. Italians are now the least happy people in Western Europe.

Italians are older, poorer, and more in debt, contributing to their unhappiness. Italians' average age is 42, and they’re not having kids (there is a 0% growth rate). This year, Italy dropped three places to 20^th on the Human Development Index. The unemployment rate (7%) is high for a World 1 country. Italians have 106% public debt in proportion to their GDP (the sixth highest in the world). Even Italian staples aren’t selling well: sales of pasta and bread were down in 2007.

The Italian economy has relied on small, family-owned businesses that use cheap labor and produce high-quality products. But with competition from countries like China, these firms aren’t prospering in a globalized economy.

The nation seems angst-ridden and unsure how or whether to change. One Italian has devoted his entire blog to his country’s demise. At one level, it seems like Italy is just in a funk, but will it be able to get out? And, more importantly, is this what is going to happen to all aging World 1 countries? Or is Italy an outlier, while most of World 1 will adapt to new global realities?

Image: José Goulão (Flickr)

If you found this post useful, make sure to sign up for our RSS feed or subscribe by email.

If you missed robot week on ChangeWaves a while back, don't fret: robots are still on S)T's radar. A few weeks ago, The Economist profiled the future of robots in Japan. Most interestingly, Toyota is now making robotics a central part of its business:

After showing off a white android that played a meek rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the violin, Toyota’s boss, Katsuaki Watanabe, announced that the company would make electro-mechanical critters a core business. Four areas look promising: nursing, cleaning homes, manufacturing and ferrying people short distances (in a sort of automatic wheelchair).

The company confesses it does not have a clear idea which of its robots will take off in the marketplace, but it will start selling them in the early 2010s based on customer needs. Toyota will centralise its robotics R&D division, which is currently in three separate locations around Japan, and double the number of engineers to 200.

Why Japan as the hotbed of robotic activity? It's not just the country's obsession with robots in cartoons. Years of low birthrates in have created a growing senior cohort supported by increasingly fewer offspring. For some in Japan, robots look like a practical solution in the next decade:

“R not I,” quipped one fellow ....That is, “robots, not immigration.” The average Japanese would rather have his bedpan changed by an iron creature comprised of nuts and bolts than by a Chinese or Filipino nurse, he explained.

S)T touched on the robots for eldercare trend a few years back in one of our Japanese generations briefs (download a full-text PDF version of the report from this link).

Image: luisvilla (Flickr)

© 2007 Jupiterimages CorporationThe US media turned its glare this week on the normally unexciting Social Security office in Washington, where Kathleen Casey-Kirschling was signing up for retirement benefits. Casey-Kirschling is, as far as anyone knows, the first US baby boomer, thanks to her birth a few seconds after midnight on January 1, 1946--and, as the nation’s reporters gloomily predicted, potentially one of the last beneficiaries of a golden age of American retirement.

Casey-Kirschling’s own comment--“I’m thrilled to think that after all these years, I’m getting paid back the money I put in”--may never be echoed by younger members of her own generation, let alone by Generation X-ers or Millennials. Eighty million retiring boomers might drive both Medicare and Social Security into debt well before 2020. Meanwhile, most American companies have stopped the defined-benefit pension plans that provided safety nets for earlier generations of retirees.

But is the future really so grim? In one of a three-brief series about boomer retirement published by our Global Lifestyles multiclient project (GL-2006-6: Boomers in Retirement—A Financial Forecast), we reported that boomers are actually about 50% better off today, in absolute terms, than their parents were at the same ages, by the yardstick of assets and income. And when incomes are adjusted to account for the smaller average size of boomer households, they are 65% better off.

However, as boomers age we found that they are likely to diverge into three distinct tiers: about 20% who will be very well off in retirement (including a segment who will be very, very well off: the top 1% of boomers hold more wealth than the bottom 80%); a middle tier of about 50% of boomers who will muddle through on savings, retirement accounts, and home equity; and a vulnerable 25% or so who face seniorhood with few assets--and more exposure to the vagaries of Social Security that Casey-Kirschling has so neatly sidestepped. Many in this last group could see declines in their standard of living once they stop working.

Which is exactly why so many boomers intend to continue working--76%, according to a Merrill Lynch survey. The business implications of this surge in older workers are fascinating, as we detail in another brief (GL-2006-19: Boomers in Retirement—A Lifestyle Forecast). For one thing, older boomer workers are much more likely than average workers to become entrepreneurs or temporary employees. Many companies could find themselves with two large, divergent groups of employees: senior boomers and 20-something millennials, potentially with little in common.

In short, boomers look set to reshape the US workforce yet once more before they exit the national stage. Now if they could only do the same for healthcare….

Robot week on Changewaves continues with this story covering the latest in home robots for eldercare in Japan.

We’ve written about home robots before, and even the potential for robots in Japanese eldercare. As the story points out, eldercare is a growing concern for the rapidly aging Japanese. Having rebuilt their country on the back of technology, it is no surprise that the Japanese would turn to technology to alleviate a social problem. As my colleague Mr. Smith points out below, robots have moved past the proof-of-concept stage. The trade show this week in Tokyo ably demonstrates this, with more than 300 sales of units intended to feed people.

But what really interested me about this trade show was not the robots, but the cyborgs. Okay,not really cyborgs (i.e cybernetic organisms, part-human, part-machine) in this case, but rather wearable equipment that boosts or extends human capabilities. On display were vests that allow older people to enhance their capacities in the form of improved arm strength and more control when lifting objects. For all the sci-fi sexiness of robots, this assistive technology is more likely the future of eldercare in places like Japan. Being able to lift a spoon to feed oneself imparts far more dignity than being fed by another, even if the other is your super cool robot pal.

Assistance is one of the 12 values that we identified as shaping technology development in the next 20 years, and these strength vests are a good example of that value in action. Of course, the commercialization of this technology means that in the end, we replace our robots masters with grandpa.

Image: Luis Villa del Campo (Flickr)

In researching an upcoming sequence of briefs on the nature of cities, I came across two pieces of information that point to how cities may deal with aging.

The first, presenting recent research from the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging and the MetLife Foundation, found that 47% of US communities surveyed have already taken some steps to prepare for the coming boom in seniors -- ranging from brighter signage on roadways  to re-zoning to allow more clustered housing for seniors.

The second piece of research, jointly conducted by Harvard University and Columbia University, looks at NORCs, or "naturally occurring retirement communities." This research found that older citizens in the developed world are either staying in or moving back to major urban centers such as New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. This research also found that, contrary to widely held assumptions, older citizens living in major urban areas are not necessarily poorer or less healthy on average than their peers living outside cities.

Nonetheless, these urban seniors remain vulnerable to factors that are often endemic to big cities, such as lack of easy access to health care, living areas that are vertically organized (like walk-up apartments), and even linguistic isolation. While smaller communities may be able to make the changes described above in the MetLife survey, major cities have a much more difficult task adjusting complex and expensive infrastructure to the needs of the elderly. Nonetheless, with the sheer numbers of seniors looming on the horizon as the baby boom ages, the next great wave of change in World 1 urban planning and policy will likely be centered around accommodating the old, just as many cities now are moving mountains to attract the young.

Image: Dan Hughes (Flickr) 

There is no doubting the global population is aging. From 2000 to 2050, the median age of the global population is projected to rise by 10 years, to 36.8 years, according to the UN. In Europe, the situation is more pronounced. European Commission data putsthe fertility rate for the EU-15 at 1.48 children per woman in 2003.  Replacement rate, or the rate at which births outpace deaths, is 2.1.  European legislators are well aware that the aging trend has major economic implications, including rising pension obligations paired with a shrinking tax base.

This last issue has now collided with, if you'll pardon the pun, a strange bedfellow in the question of whether or not European policies on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are pro-growth. Setting aside the political or moral issues around the technology, researchers at Sheffield University in the UK have concluded that while it could cost around £13,000 to provide a full cycle of IVF treatment to parents unable to conceive on their own, a child born of that IVF treatment would contribute approximately £160,000 in taxes and insurance payments to the UK economy over a lifetime--a net gain to the government of £147,000 per additional child these policies would add to the population.

In its coverage of this perhaps cold-sounding proposal, the BBC points out that national governments currently look to migration as a means of getting a boost in populations. However, these migrants don't provide the same "net gain" in revenue as they may, in some cases, come with additional family members who require more public services and social support--something that may be less likely with a domestic birth to a family requesting IVF, the researchers imply.

This may simply be an academic argument for the time being--research that bolsters the British government's interest in increasing IVF treatment and providing more liberal social benefits to encourage families. However, it shows the new areas into which social policy and economic policy will increasingly tread as the aging crunch erodes the ability of governments  to maintain the social compact with its citizens and remain competitive. Somewhere out there, Aldous Huxley may be perking up an ear as this discussion evolves.

(Image: sxc.hu)