7IM Short Thoughts: Ageing Population = Healthcare Innovation
As the global population lives longer and longer, could healthcare and investment in over-65s really be a future investment trend?
Our Head of Equity Strategy, Ben Kumar, explains all.
We're already into March 2023. Time is flying by. And actually it's flying by for the whole world because by 2030, just seven years away, one seventh of the world is going to be over the age of 65. So 1.4 billion people. In Europe, actually, it's even bigger. A quarter of the population is going to be over the age of 65 by the start of the next decade.
That has some important implications, and they haven't been lost on healthcare companies. It costs three times as much to treat someone over the age of 65 as it does someone under the age of 65 for the same problem. So healthcare companies have looked at this, looked to where the money is as well, which tends to be in those people who have accumulated wealth throughout their lives, and they're investing more than half of their research and development into drugs, treatments, technologies that target people over the age of 65.
Now, that tells me a couple of things. Number one, hopefully I can look forward to clogging up a golf course at the age of 120. Number two, it's going to be one of the most important investment trends of the next couple of decades.
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