Educating children vital to enjoying retirement.

Asia, which has been the fastest growing region of the world in recent decades, is going to face declining growth, with an ageing population, as has already happened in Western countries, wrote  Prof Indira Rajaraman. Not just the West, fertility rate in Japan dropped has dropped to a record 1.4 per woman. This is the 36th year in a row that the number of children has declined, last year it shrank 170,000. Fertility in many countries has fallen to below the replacement level of 2.1 per woman. "India, Indonesia and the Philippines will be the last to cross over from working age domination, and are the three countries still poised to reap the demographic dividend of a young age structure." Fertility rate in India is still above replacement level and is expected to get there by 2020. By 2030, India will overtake China to be the most populous nation on earth. An increasing population means more young people looking for jobs. "The problem of declining rate of output growth, and the declining employment generated by that growth, is now a global phenomenon." Naturally, with a vast population, even with declining fertility rates, India is facing a jobs crisis. The World Bank predicts that 69% of manufacturing jobs will be lost due to automation, so the emphasis has to shift to services. Unfortunately, over 80% of engineers are not fit to be employed. "Automation is an irreversible reality set to grow everywhere, which leaves the whole world having to scramble to find service sector employment for new entrants to the labour force. Service sectors are resistant to automation, more so than manufacturing processes." One sector which could create a lot of employment while saving vast amounts of money is food processing. Around 40% of food is wasted even before it reaches consumers. We need to have clean silos to store grains, cold stores to store fruits and vegetables and a swift transport system to get the produce from areas of excess production to areas of consumption. That will need land, continuous electricity supply and a removal of bottlenecks at state borders. To keep up with the fast changing technology the education system has to evolve quickly to keep up with the world. Without a good school education children will never reach that far. Large number of people will be required to look after rising numbers of old people. A lot of the work will be in general assistance, such as helping the aged to get around, helping them with food and supervising medicine intake. That will need money. Most retired people in India do not have enough money to survive and India is ranked last in care for the elderly. Prof Rajaraman has good ideas but implementation is in the hands of politicians. Not encouraging.