Healthy Aging as Economic Strategy: Connecting the Workforce, Aging, and Fiscal Sustainability

Two private roundtables at this year's SEF, one with the OECD on healthy aging's return on investment for aging workforces across Asia-Pacific, and one on adult vaccination's role in preventing the cardiovascular disease and other NCDs that drive most of the cost of aging, point to the same underlying case: the value of healthy aging and prevention to workforce participation, to health-system costs, and to economic growth is real and measurable, but it isn't yet centered in the policy and funding decisions of aging societies. Building on insights from the two roundtables and AP-CHAAI's work across the region, this panel connects what the data shows, what economists and health experts already see, and what it will take to make the case for prevention to finance ministries and business leaders.