As Asia grays, can an aging Philippines avoid its neighbors’ fate?

Maria Esperanza Carmen Liamco, 68, once worked overseas on Bahrain’s national ID system and helped found the Philippine School Bahrain. In 1997, after 14 years abroad, she returned to the Philippines to care for her sick mother.

Back home, she went on to work in several government offices over 13 years, eight of which as a contractual. But when she retired at 65 (the mandated government retirement age) in 2023, she did not receive any pension.

The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) requires at least 15 years of service for a consistent annual pension, and otherwise provides a flat payout — a sum that, for Liamco, has nearly run dry.

After retiring, she returned to work as a board secretary of the school in Bahrain, which supports her. She has savings, and the family owns their Quezon City home, so rent isn’t a worry.

But she has concerns about what the unexpected costs of aging could mean for her — for one, medical treatment that could be expensive can wipe out whatever funds she has.

Liamco is one of 7.4 million Filipinos aged 65 or older, a group set to grow as Filipino women have fewer children than at any point on record. This shift, experts said, is moving the country toward a new demographic reality: an aging society.

Growing old before growing rich

The Philippines, long defined by its large share of young people, is at the start of that transition. The United Nations (UN) considers a country an "aging society" once 7% of its population are 65 or older.

The question is not whether the Philippines will age: it's what the country does with the time it has left before it does.

"The Philippines reached a [fertility rate] of 1.7 at a gross national income per capita of only [P280,450] in 2024, well below the income levels at which most aging societies began their transition," Jose Ramon Albert, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), said. "This is the risk of growing old before growing rich."

The country’s fertility rate is below the 2.1 total fertility rate needed to keep a population stable, known as "replacement level."

Far from where the Philippines is now, Japan’s gross national income per capita was P1 million when it became an aging society in 1970, while South Korea’s was about P1.4 million in 2000, adjusted for inflation.

The effect of a fertility rate below replacement level takes time to show up. The Philippines still added about 3.7 million people between 2020 and 2024, because a large generation of women is still in their childbearing years. That window is closing.

Shrinking workforce

In the decades ahead, fewer births mean fewer young workers. As more people retire or leave work than young people enter it, and as people live longer, fewer workers are left to support the nation’s economy. That also puts pressure on older Filipinos to keep working, many with no choice.

"The most urgent thing people are usually worried about with aging populations is the workforce shrinking," said Dr. Marie Ng, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore's Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, who studies demographic and health trends across Asia.

"With the workforce shrinking, you also don't have enough of the financial foundation to support the aging needs," she added.

Japan, South Korea trends

Japan's working-age population (people 15 to 64) peaked at about 87 million in 1995 and has since fallen to about 73.5 million. Roughly three in 10 Japanese are now 65 or older, the highest share of any country with a population over 100,000.

The overall population has shrunk for 17 consecutive years. Tokyo has spent more than three decades trying to reverse the trend, including a pledge of about ¥3.5 trillion a year (roughly P1.6 trillion) since 2024. Its fertility rate still fell to a record 1.14 in 2025. Adult diapers now outsell ones for babies, and the country has over 9 million vacant homes.

South Korea is on a similar path. In 2024, its working-age population fell below 70% of the total population for the first time.

After spending an estimated P17.5 trillion over 18 years to boost births, South Korea still has gaps in emergency care and too few neonatal doctors for its already small number of newborns. Its fertility rate is 0.80, among the lowest in the world.

The money in both nations has gone into a wide range of measures. Many are aimed at births, such as cash for new parents, better-paid parental leave, and housing help for young families.

Pronatal incentives, or efforts to encourage an increase in the births of children, "are not shooting up the fertility rate at all," said Ng.

That does not make them worthless. They matter for children's well-being and women's workforce participation, she said, even if they cannot necessarily reverse a decline in population growth.

Even with deep pockets, Japan and South Korea have seen limited results. What does that mean for countries with less money?

“The current systems in Asia, in general, are not quite ready in terms of the influx of aging populations,” said Ng.

The pattern isn’t limited to rich countries. Thailand became an aging society in 2004 with a gross national income per capita of P281,184, according to UN and World Bank data. In 2025, just 416,514 babies were born there, the fewest since 1950, and deaths outnumbered births by more than 143,000.

Vietnam is not far behind. It entered its aging transition in 2015 and is projected to become an aged society by the mid-2030s, according to the World Bank, when 14% of its population will be 65 or older.

Across Asia, a 2024 Asian Development Bank report found, 40% of people over 60 have no pension, and about 60% don’t get regular health checks. Among workers 65 and older, 94% are in the informal sector.

Many Filipinos are no different: workers who are contractuals or in informal jobs have no pension and little savings. As they age, many will have to lean on a stretched public health system and on their children. But there will be fewer children to lean on.

Labor exporter

The Philippines is one of the world's largest exporters of labor too.

At least 10.8 million Filipinos live abroad, and an estimated 2.1 million are overseas workers. Their remittances prop up many households as well as the country’s economy. Albert argued that this also complicates the country's aging timeline in a way none of its neighbors face.

"Aging here will unfold alongside a large diaspora, which cushions household incomes through remittances," he said, "but also means that some of the working-age population supporting our elderly will be abroad, and that our care workers are in demand overseas precisely when we will need them at home."

It is an irony hard to miss. Many Filipino healthcare workers and caregivers look after other countries' older people abroad.

Meanwhile, Filipino children with parents working overseas are cared for by grandparents. When those grandparents need care themselves, who will be there?

Building for what's coming

"Aging is going to be inevitable," Ng said. “And we do expect from data that people will live longer. The question is how to keep people alive, healthy, and productive?"

In the Philippines, the question of meeting the moment comes down to being able to retrofit existing systems for its seniors.

As Liamco thinks about the future, she said the Philippines needs more long-term solutions for supporting its seniors.

“Dole-out programs like bundles of food or funds are good, but we need more proactive efforts and opportunities, especially for seniors who are in more labor jobs who have less support,” she said.

The CPD released the Philippine Population and Development Plan of Action (PPD-POA) for 2023-2028, which includes a portion dedicated to fostering a healthy and productive workforce as the population ages. The National Commission of Senior Citizens (NCSC) has a plan for the same period, Philippine Plan of Action for Senior Citizens 2023-2028.

Some of their provisions include improving health infrastructure, creating long-term insurance policies, and increasing anti-poverty and social programs for seniors.

Scattered data is a hurdle for planning, the office of NCSC Commissioner Gloria-Jumamil Mercado said in a written response to Rappler. Information on seniors is spread across agencies such as the PSA, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), GSIS, and SSS.

“Although the DSWD/PSA has an existing Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS)/Census, its limitation is timely and accurate record-keeping because it is only updated every three years, causing severe data latency,” said the office.

A proposed Philippine Ageing Data Observatory at the NCSC could bring that information into one database, with dashboards, more timely data and real-time analytics down to the local level, according to documents shared with Rappler. The proposal, sponsored by Commissioner Camilo G. Gudmalin, is still subject to deliberation by the Commission en banc.

Albert argued the Philippines still has the advantage of time. Its working-age population is still rising, even as the number of births decreases and people age.

His prescription: raise the productivity of the country's smaller, incoming generations and broaden pension coverage to informal workers and overseas Filipinos.

He also suggested extending healthy working lives through preventive care and building long-term care infrastructure, an effort that presents a serious challenge, given existing basic gaps in healthcare across the country.

"The demographic future of the Philippines is already visible in the 2025 National Demographic and Health Survey," Albert said.

"Whether we become a development success story depends on whether we treat the next 20 years as the window in which to invest in children and build for aging, rather than as a reprieve." – with reports from Eirene Manatlao/Rappler.com