Asian-Pacific nations would be discussing the perils of ageing during July, 2007

A United Nations-backed meeting on the social, health and economic consequences of population ageing would start in Bangkok, Thailand in July, 2007. The two-day seminar is being held by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), in collaboration with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Population ageing, due to declining fertility and increasing longevity, has increasingly come to pose a challenge to the Asia-Pacific region, with the number of older persons in the area to grow rapidly, surging from 410 million in 2007 to 733 million in 2025 to an expected 1.3 billion in 2050.