Herbert Smith, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, presents, “Population Aging: On the Future of a Delusion”
Demography has a lot of great tools for peering into the future. We knew that declining fertility was going to make societies older. Throw in declines in mortality, especially at older ages, and the aging and aged societies that so many of us live in were always in the cards. But does the fact that aged societies are not unexpected make them any less revolutionary? I have wondered for some time whether the gradualism and continuity in the demographic process that has gotten us to this point has blinded us to the oddity of where we are. Whereas most talks feature a speaker trying to convince an audience that he or she knows something that they do not, here the speaker would like to know what everyone else knows about the future of aging and aged societies that he does not. This being 2021, Covid-19 will be mentioned.
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link