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> Posted by Joshua Goldstein, Principal Director for Economic Citizenship & Disability Inclusion, CFI

“Age Invaders” is the cover story of a recent issue of The Economist. Today, 8 percent of the global population is over 65. This figure will increase dramatically in the coming years and, with low and declining birth rates in many developed and developing countries, respectively, it is projected that by 2050 the global population 65 years and older will be 2.5 times that of 0 to 4 year olds. This is an exact reversal of the situation in 1950 and is a proportionality unseen since the hominids began to walk upright.

All human institutions will be affected by the greying demographic, but I would like to narrow my scope to just one area: the implications for providing financial services to those customers who fall prey to age-related cognitive decline.

Dr. Jerome Groopman, in the May 22 edition of The New York Review of Books, reports on an important new study of persons who reached 65 without any signs of dementia. He indicates that for these individuals, the chance of their developing Alzheimer’s disease over their ensuing 10 years is more than 35 percent. Groopman describes, “This sobering statistic translates into a cascade of symptoms by the persons struck down by the disease, beginning with short-term problems, and then gradually long-term memory, in conjunction with difficulties in cognition including confusion, disorientation, and poor emotional control.”

Families everywhere are trying to cope with a loved one who is experiencing some kind of life altering dementia resulting from Alzheimer’s or from another cause – perhaps a multitude of silent micro-infarctions (tiny undetected strokes).

Families like mine.

My mother still manages to live on her own with almost no support. She usually bristles when we suggest help.   She does her own housekeeping, volunteers at a hospital, and takes a mile walk everyday—an enviably spry 87.

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