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Today the proportion of the elderly in Europe is close to 15%. This percentage has nearly doubled within the past 50 years. Within the next half century, the amount of people aged 65 and over will form an estimated 20 per cent of the population.

Mostly ageing is associated with a longer life span. At the same time, population ageing is brought on by a decreasing amount of children, which has made new generations smaller than their predecessors. In Europe and Estonia, these changes started more than 100 years ago. By now, they have spread to all areas of the world. Even to Africa, where the population is still quite young.

An ageing society is a complex one, since the changes that lead us to ageing come together with modernization – the development of science, technology and medicine. Therefore, whoever wishes to reverse the ageing must also reverse all the developments we have made, including replacing a longer life span with a shorter one. In the context of a lifetime, the modern society means that next to having and growing offspring, we need to spend more time on education and work. We also have to furnish the years added to the latter part of our lives. Perhaps a prerequisite for such a society to work seamlessly is the existence of an elderly proportion of the people helping those currently making their decisions and choices in the first part of their lives?

So we ask: can an ageing society function? Why not? It depends on how smart we act – as both a society as well as individuals. For example, how well can we include people in every stage of life, is the work market flexible enough, can we make the economy more productive so the smaller and older, yet the smarter workforce could generate more wealth?

Another important factor for managing ageing is whether the society is family-friendly enough to keep the rate of births high. Is it difficult to combine work with family life? Our own vitality and adaptability are equally important to keep us useful to the society all the way to a high age. We must find these answers for ourselves, since no one has ever lived in a similar society.

Prognosis shows a stable ascent of ageing, but the pace differs by country. Estonia is around the middle compared to other European states. The Estonian Institute for Population Studies would like to thank all those who participated at the SHARE Estonia 50+ research, helping us find out how exactly the ageing process is happening. Let’s try to age smartly: even when we may have some extra time, it’s what we do with that time that counts.