The developed world has pushed back death to such an extent that it is this, not increased fertility, that is driving up the number of people on the planet.
Sarah Harper, professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford, told the Abta Travel Convention that this raised a question for travel firms about the types of customer they will have in the future.
“It’s all going to be around health. Are they going to be healthy active individuals post 65 and 70 who will then leave the labour market and be able to enjoy leisure or are we going to find frailty in that group?”
Harper said now in Europe half the population is alive aged 80, compared to 1850 when half the population was dead by the time it had reached 45.
One of the key reasons death had been pushed back was because we have conquered smoking, added Harper, but she added that obesity was the next big challenge.
Having shown how the obesity ‘epidemic’ has increased massively in the US since 1986 so that in some states it now represents over 35% of the population, she said this would increasingly be dealt with through medicine and medical intervention.
One potential negative implication for travel is that the ageing of the world’s population means that retirement ages are increasing, with Australia already having moved to 70.
Harper said that once people do retire and use their leisure time to travel they may need assistance due to mobility problems.
Global demographics show that across the planet women’s life expectancy outstrips that for men thought to be due less to social factors and lifestyle than genetics and the fact that women have a more robust immune system.
Harper refuted commonly held beliefs suggesting the world population is out of control saying the areas of the world where fertility rates are at their lowest, marginally above one child, are in China, Korea and other urban areas in south east Asia and India.
One unknown is sub-Saharan Africa where fertility and mortality rates remain high, but overall world population predictions up to the middle of the next century has been more than halved from 24 billion.