How to Age Successfully: Analyzing Drivers via Fuzzy BWM Approach

Introduction

The world is experiencing a change in population, especially in the age structure. Aging has become a major issue while life expectancy is increasing, but the fertility rates decrease. The benefit of living longer lives comes with some burdens, which is an issue for many countries. In the year 2020, there are 727 million persons aged 65 years and over. In predicting the next three decades, the number of older people is projected to be more than double, meaning that the number will be over 1.5 billion by the year 2050. Whether it is a developed or an emerging country, all see the increase of population by 2050. In global, the rate of the population over 65 is expected to increase around 16% in 2050, which is now around 9.3%.

The drivers of population aging can be studied in various lenses, such as social and economic burdens, which all needed to be investigated. Socially, declines in fertility, changes in marriage patterns, numbers of divorce, living with elders, education increase in younger generations, migration, household properties, or being productive over 65 years matter. On the other hand, economically, when a country gets older, the GDP matters to gain the social needs even to have a household condition. Living single in a household is dependent on GDP in most developed countries in Europe or the United States of America; on the other hand, co-residency in a household being a social matter rather than economic. As co-residency with elder and adult children is deemed to be an economic driven factor at first, due to societal change, older persons are in households to care for grandchildren or the lack of single living household facilities, which is also both a societal and economic factor. Even though the developing countries are shifting through smaller families and smaller households, it will not be wrong to conclude that living with elders is declining. Thus, the family meaning and structure are changing around the world.

As there are many differences between developed, developing, or least developed countries, there is an isomorphism of traditional family structures in demographic change formed by economic and social change. COVID 19 pandemic had similar impacts on the aging issue. However, the final observed damage for the elder mortality rate was different between the country's development status.

This chapter presents a literature review of various concepts related to aging via lenses of healthy aging of older people. The health challenges in the elderly, ageism, stereotyping, and some beliefs and anxiety concepts were addressed before analyzing the successful aging policies adopted from the literature. The authors created questionnaires to define participants opinions of aging and to reveal best-worst of the policies taken as the drivers of ‘successful aging’. The design of the chapter consists of analyzing the factors that can express the proposed system for a prosperous aging society after the methods are explained. Fuzzy BWM approach is chosen considering the multi-dimensional structure of aging. By evaluating the aging through the proposed policies, the complex interrelationships and the influences between the main drivers will be revealed. To able to understand to define to most and the least desired criteria allow practitioners, decision-makers, and policymakers to get the problem of aging not only seeing the current picture but also developing some policies sequenced with the culture. Therefore, as a multi-criteria decision method, Fuzzy BWM is used in this study to address further information for the decision-makers. Determination of relationships of adopted criteria helps to see the complex structure of a latent variable of aging.