The number of people aged 60 years or over has more than doubled from 541 million in 1995, outstripping births.
It is projected to reach 2.1 billion by 2050.
The COVID pandemic unmasked the paradoxical costs of isolation for protection, producing loneliness, depression, and social isolation, which are strong predictors of decline and mortality in seniors.
The pandemic also revealed outright ageism in access to scarce life-saving care and equipment, and a tragic rise in elder abuse in cramped and tense family homes.
Celebrating older persons
On October 1, 2025, the United Nations celebrated International Day of Older Persons with the theme: Older Persons Driving Local and Global Action: Our Aspirations, Our Well-Being and Our Rights.
It focused on the crucial role of older persons in building compassionate and equitable societies.
This requires a renewal of inter-generational communication and the restoration of passing on the wisdom of the aged in storytelling.
Wisdom and technology
In an age of information technology and disrespect for the wisdom of elders, older people often turn to grandchildren for computer help.
Stereotypes of ageing depict the elderly as dependent and in need of care, burdens, and predict a ‘tsunami’ of costly care overwhelming systems and taking resources from the young.
In reality, elders are a diverse group with different trajectories of ageing.
- Compacted morbidity after a long life, often considered ‘successful ageing,’ even though genetics and social situation are more important factors than lifestyle choices.
- Progressive frailty and decline.
- Chronic illness and multiple co-morbidities which affect the ageing course.
- Dementias which bring special challenges for care and communication.
Changing family structures
Many young persons are fearful of the elderly because they no longer experience living with and caring for family members in decline as normal.
Across the globe, adult children move away for work and education.
City living has no room for elders in small houses and cramped apartments.
A crisis in elder care
The demographic explosion, coupled with the changes in family structure and life, has created a crisis of residential facilities for those needing care and services for seniors living alone.
Social isolation is linked to the undervaluing of seniors in our society.
Reclaiming inter-generational solidarity
We need to reclaim inter-generational solidarity through the creation of wisdom spaces with the young in families, schools, and society, and the power of storytelling.
Ordinary wisdom is in the stories of our lives, because storytelling and listening constitute the processes by which we create and discover our personal identity.
Sharing wisdom and compassion
Elders can share the lessons of lifelong learning, devastation and resilience, and the importance of relationships of care and respect.
Young children and adults, who are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, depression, and loss of meaning despite all their technology, can share their fears for their future in this tumultuous world.
Together, they can promote the global equitable and compassionate societies the U.N. sets as a goal.
- Nuala Kenny is a Sister of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a pediatrician. An officer of the Order of Canada since 1999, she has published several books, including Healing the Church (Novalis, 2012) and Rediscovering the Art of Dying (2017). She is co-author of Still Unhealed: Treating the Pathology in the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2019). She most recently published A Post-Pandemic Church: Prophetic Possibilities (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2021).