The Chaeum Care Biz Lab

 Is ageing only a matter of cost? Pension burdens, rising healthcare spending, shortages of care workers, a shrinking working-age population. These are usually the first terms in which we discuss ageing. I have worked in the care field for many years, so I know this language well. In my own work, older people are often spoken of first as people who need care. That is why Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging , a 2024 volume edited by Joseph F. Coughlin, Director of the MIT AgeLab, and Luke Yoquinto, confronted me with a very different set of questions. Can a society in which people live longer create new markets and industries? Can those industries cluster in particular places and become new engines of regional growth?[1] This article begins with those questions. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global population aged 60 and over will rise from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion in 2030, when one in six people worldwide will be aged 60 or old...

Author's Note This is the final installment of the five-part series “When Does a Home Become a Place of Care?” The series has traced how care moved from being primarily a family responsibility into the market, and how products, industries, labor, and technology have increasingly become organized around the homes of older adults. In doing so, it has examined how the global longevity economy—where healthcare, housing, daily living, culture, and technology intersect—has evolved, and how the care supply chain may be reshaped in the years ahead. The Series Part 1. Buying Care — When Care Leaves the Family and Enters the Market Part 2. Care Products Coming Home — What Do People Buy for Care at Home? Part 3. Care Industries Moving Toward the Home — Who Is Knocking on the Older Adult’s Door? Part 4. Care Work Coming Home — Who Will Provide Care, Where Will They Come From, and Under What Conditions? Part 5. How Will the Care Industries Around the Home Be Reshaped? — The Next Shape...