Connection: King Lear and the Aging of Populations

Today we learned about a very important concept in King Lear: Incrementalism. Incrementalism is defined as a process of making gradual changes to make a big change. Often the subjects of incrementalism do not realize what has happened until it is too late and the big change has been made, because they were oblivious to the little changes.

The example we are dealing with in class was in King Lear how Lear gradually loses his power to his daughters and does not comprehend it until they are giving him commands and taking away his knights. Once Lear realizes how unaware he was that his kingdom was slipping through his fingers and into the hands of his power hungry daughters, he goes mad because by this point, it was too late for him to do anything about it.

There is incrementalism in our world right now, and the most important thing is to notice it before it becomes too late. One example where it is too late is the aging of population in Japan. It used to be that only 4.9% of Japanese were over the age of 65 in the 1950s, with the majority, about 60% being between the ages of 14 and 64 and about 35% under the age of 14. In 2009, however, the number of people age 65 and over had increased to 23% while the number of people under 14 dropped to 13%. When these numbers are put next to each other, they seem like such an obvious change, but considering that they happened over a 59 year period, it went by almost unnoticed.

Japan's aging population has had many effects on their country. It has forced a higher dependancy ratio among their citizens and changed government spending so that much more has to be spent on nursing homes and providing welfare. It is projected that by 2025, 27% of all national income will be spent on social welfare.

Japan did not notice their problem until it finally hit them, but there is hope for other aging countries such as China, Korea, and even the United States. The first step is to recognize what is about to happen when the large population of adults in our countries become seniors and start to plan now what can be done about it. The most important thing to realize about incrementalism is that small changes can lead to big disasters, just as King Lear taught us.