Old age

Both the absolute number of older people living in Germany and their share of the total population have been growing for many years. This is due to factors such as low birth rates and increasing life expectancy. Demographic development forecasts assume that this trend will continue in the coming decades. 

Demographic change poses a variety of social challenges, for example for the pension system and the healthcare system, which is financed on a solidarity basis. On average, the older people are, the more healthcare services they utilise. Dementia is a prominent cost factor because it correlates particularly strongly with age and the care of those affected is very expensive. Financial and ethical aspects are closely linked here. From an ethical point of view, the guiding principle in every stage of the disease should be to guarantee people with dementia the best possible quality of life, independence and self-determination. However, the corresponding care concepts are generally associated with particularly high personnel and financial costs.

Even if finding ethically acceptable answers to the development of the population’s age structure is one of the main tasks of health and social policy, old age should not be viewed primarily and even less exclusively as a problem. The former predominantly deficit-orientated view of old age is being replaced by increasingly positive concepts of old age, which focus on the abilities and potential of older and very old people. Civil society can benefit greatly from the fact that not only more and more people reach an advanced age, but many of them also remain fit and productive for longer and longer.