Envelhecimento, ciclo de vida e mudanças socioeconômicas: novos desafios para os sistemas de seguridade social

Abstract

The process of population aging, while widely recognized as one of the main achievements of the 20th century, engenders the challenge of improving the well-being of the entire population on the basis of its full participation in the process of development and an equitable distribution of the benefits therefrom. The change in age structure poses implications about the intergenerational viability of social security systems. Besides the challenges presented by the traditional programs of the current systems, population aging adds a new issue or social risk: the long-term care demanded by the elderly due to loss of instrumental and/or functional ability to deal with activities of daily living (ADL). By instrumental ability one can understand the ability to perform activities such as fixing meals, shopping for groceries, going to the bank, house-cleaning etc. Functional ability, on the other hand, refers to the following activities: feeding oneself, having a bath, walking short distances, dressing oneself etc. The concern with long-term care for the elderly in developed countries, where the process of population aging is more advanced, originated as a need to separate the growing costs of treatment for the elderly from other health and social security costs. The costs, whether tangible or not, involved in the activity of caring for/assisting the elderly tend to increase with the massive entrance of women in the labor market and with the changes in the gender contracts, suggesting growing obstacles for the families to meet the responsibility of taking care of their elderly. In developing countries such as Brazil, this question is aggravated by adding to a long list that demands answer from social security systems, such as poverty, exclusion of a growing number of people, and the current level of inequality. In order to go forward in the debate about long-term care aimed at a growing elder population in Brazil, it is necessary to rediscuss and redefine a series of parameters of the current social security system, especially the substantial number of informal workers who are barred from it. The precarious balance, or result, of the Brazilian social security system needs to be revised and analyzed in the light of demographic, social and economic trends forecast for the next 20 or 30 years. Only after the restructuring of the system is it possible to consider the incorporation of this new and latent demand from the Brazilian society.