UN Urges Countries to Plan for Aging Populations

It's a fact of life that older people slow down, so it’s no surprise, for example, that they take longer to cross a street. How should communities accommodate the world’s rapidly aging population? A new United Nations report on aging urges countries to answer that question, because soon every fifth person in the world will be over 60.

Consider Japan, where 30 percent of Japanese are elderly -- the world’s oldest population. By mid-century, according to the U.N. report, 64 countries will reach that mark.