'The Gray Tsunami': World faces wave of aging

In a recent article that appeared in Discover Magazine, ASU professors discuss one of the fastest-aging populations in the country, right here in Arizona, and what that means socially, politically and economically.

“People are living longer, 20 and 30 years longer, across the globe,” says Michael Birt, gerontologist and director of the Center for Sustainable Health in ASU's Biodesign Institute.

Birt traveled with Jennifer Glick, sociologist and demographer at the ASU Center for Population Dynamics, and Haruna Fukui, a Japanese graduate student working on her doctorate in sociology, to Sun City – a retirement community in the Northwest Valley of Phoenix – to address how the "gray tsunami" will play out over the next half-century.

Researchers are calling it "the gray tsunami" because "it threatens to inundate the world’s health-care systems and sweep away today’s social, political, and economic norms," writes Jeff Wheelwright of Discover.

Access complete article below.