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Tackling the crisis of care for older people: lessons from India and Japan

Family ties in the world’s second-most-populous country are loosening as more Indians move for work. Farther east, one in three Japanese people will be over 65 by 2036. What can these countries teach us?
  1. Benjamin Plackett

    1. Benjamin Plackett is a freelance writer based in Dubbo, Australia.

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People stand in a courtyard exercising with hand-held dumb-bells

People exercise with dumb-bells at a health promotion to mark Japan’s Respect for the Aged Day in Tokyo. Credit: Toru Hanai/Reuters/Alamy

How to finance and deliver care for a population that is ageing fast is a politically fraught subject. In the United Kingdom, for example, many Westminster analysts say that Prime Minister Theresa May lost her governing majority in 2017 in response to her proposed social-care reforms, dubbed a ‘dementia tax’ by political opponents. In September 2021, the administration led by her successor, Boris Johnson, was criticized over its social-care policy for raising the rates of national insurance, a social-security tax paid by working adults and their employers, in a bid to raise £36 billion (US$48 billion) to fund long-term social care.

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Nature 601, S12-S14 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00074-x

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Ageing, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

References

  1. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) et al. Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) Wave 1 (IIPS, 2020).

  2. Rajagopalan, J., Hurzuk, S., Arshad, F., Raja, P. & Alladi, S. The COVID-19 Long-Term Care Situation in India (International Long Term Care Policy Network, 2020).

  3. Curry, N., Castle-Clarke, S. & Hemmings, N. What Can England Learn From the Long-Term Care System in Japan? (Nuffield Trust, 2018).

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  4. Boland, L. et al. BMC Geriatr. 17, 20 (2017).

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  5. Ide, H. et al. Int. J. Care Caring 5, 165–171 (2021).

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