On April 25, global attention at the IMF meeting focused largely on tariffs. Yet the IMF’s newly released report turned its focus elsewhere—on population aging. As people live longer and have fewer children, demographic structures shift. Initially, this can be beneficial (e.g., fewer dependents for families to support), but over time, it leads to a shrinking working-age population, reduced productivity, and slower economic growth.

What’s notable is that a problem long known in Greece is now becoming a global issue. More and more countries are crossing a demographic tipping point, where the once-beneficial “demographic dividend” turns into a “demographic drag.” Greece hit this point in 1998, shortly after Italy. According to the IMF, the world is now at its own Rubicon: aging is no longer a future threat—it’s a reality, and one that will fully take hold before 2027. As emerging economies begin to feel the effects, the slowdown in growth extends to productivity, savings, and public finances.

The IMF’s Global Outlook

The IMF’s projections span milestones in 2030 and 2050 and are based on an intergenerational general equilibrium model that incorporates 69 countries (or groups of countries), each aging in different ways and at different speeds, and economically interacting with one another.

The Threat

Under the baseline scenario, the IMF expects the global annual growth rate to decline by 1.1 percentage points by 2050, and by 2.0 percentage points by 2100. Already-aging nations like Japan and Italy will see absolute declines, while countries like Canada and the U.S. will stagnate. China will experience a sharper drop (2.7%), and India will follow suit after 2050. These persistent trends are projected to have a greater long-term impact than current short-term threats like trade tariffs.

The Opportunity: The “Silver Economy”

In contrast to this grim outlook, the IMF presents the concept of the Silver Economy as a potential solution. Since aging doesn’t affect all countries—or even all regions within a country—equally, reducing these disparities can help mitigate its negative effects. This analysis draws from extensive data on nearly one million people over the age of 50 across 41 countries (including Greece), covering the years 2000 to 2022. The key conclusion: up to 75% of the economic slowdown caused by aging can be recovered—if nations adopt a strategic Silver Economy approach.

This silver lining hinges on two main strategies:

  1. Healthy Aging – improving the quality and years of healthy life.
  2. Activating Labor Reserves – increasing employment among women and discouraging early retirement.

There is also potential for gains from cross-border economic exchanges between countries at different stages of aging, such as capital flows from older to younger populations.

Healthy Aging

As life expectancy increases across countries, so do the number of healthy years lived. Contrary to fears, aging does not simply prolong years of frailty—rather, the additional years tend to be healthy. Over the past 20 years, life expectancy increased by 4.5 years, and so did healthy life expectancy.

This improvement, however, is uneven. Cognitive abilities, for example, have shown remarkable improvement: in 2022, a 70-year-old had the same cognitive performance as a 53-year-old in 2000. Gains in overall resilience and physical vulnerability have followed similar trends. However, disparities persist: poorer individuals, rural populations, the less educated, and women often face worse health outcomes.

These inequalities affect employment opportunities and wages, reducing a country’s overall economic “score.” However, they also represent an untapped potential: narrowing these gaps could reverse much of the demographic damage.

Better health and preserved cognitive functions mean that people over 50 are now 20% more likely to be employed, earn 30% more, retire later, and work more weeks per year than a decade ago. The benefits are even more pronounced for those under 60, as they are more actively engaged in the workforce.

These gains, however, require that individuals are not hindered by outdated labor policies, pension rules, or age-related biases. Encouragingly, technological advances such as AI may support older workers by mitigating the risk of skill obsolescence—provided those workers are supported and not left behind.

Unlocking Labor Potential

In most countries, people exit the workforce well before the official retirement age. This is often linked to health but also shows strong social disparities. The IMF highlights the importance of the actual retirement age, which can be influenced voluntarily regardless of the statutory limit.

The IMF identifies three key avenues to workforce revitalization, modeled both individually and together:

  1. Healthy Aging Policies for those aged 50–64. Improved health enables people to work longer and contributes half the gains seen from 2000–2020, potentially boosting GDP growth by 0.2 percentage points by 2050.
  2. Later Real Retirement Ages for those 65+, when life expectancy after retirement exceeds 20 years. This could reduce the projected growth decline by an additional 0.1 percentage points, especially in Europe.
  3. Closing the Gender Employment Gap by 75% by 2040. This could further lift growth by 0.3 percentage points by 2050.

The cumulative effect is striking: it may be possible to recover three-quarters of the economic losses caused by aging. The gains are roughly evenly distributed across the three strategies. Countries already experiencing aging will see improvements sooner (before 2050), while the benefits will reach developing nations later.

Who Stands to Gain the Most?

When calculating the fiscal space—that is, how much public revenue or spending can be saved by addressing the demographic drag—Greece ranks first in the world, followed by Italy. These countries have long struggled with aging and also maintain large gender gaps in employment. Thus, policies focused on convergence and reducing inequality can yield far greater returns than in, say, Sweden, which has already optimized many of these areas.

The Data Behind the Analysis

The Silver Economy strategy relies heavily on data that tracks how biological aging unfolds across different countries and social conditions. These insights help identify not only who is aging and how, but also who is not benefiting from progress.

The IMF’s analysis uses longitudinal data that tracks individuals’ health, cognitive performance, employment status, wealth, and family over time. Since health and employment are deeply interconnected (healthier people work more; wealthier people “buy” better health), tracking changes over time is essential to understanding causality—what leads to what.

The main dataset comes from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which began in 2004 and covers all EU countries, Switzerland, and Israel. SHARE is based on an American survey and now tracks individuals over the age of 50, collecting data in ten waves so far. For example, someone who was 50 and working in 2004 is now 71 and retired—and still provides data about their health, finances, and family.

This survey inspired similar research in 13 other countries, including Japan, South Korea, India, China, South Africa, and Mexico. Researchers worldwide now use harmonized data from nearly one million individuals, covering the years 2000 to 2022.

This global data allows scientists to analyze how aging unfolds differently across nations, generations, and social groups—and how events like the pandemic influence those patterns. Beyond the IMF, SHARE data has fueled over 4,000 scientific publications across disciplines ranging from economics and medicine to sociology and psychology.

Greece’s early investment in understanding how its citizens experience aging is now paying off. As aging becomes a global challenge, the country is well-positioned to benefit from the solutions it helped uncover.