Tim Greves Symposium 2013

The symposium is a high level event for decision makers in economics, politics, science, and media in Norway, organized by the The Norwegian Atlantic Committee. The annual symposium brings together key people with different backgrounds to discuss and develop further insight into significant issues of society, across the scientific and business divisions. This year's event is themed along the Norwegian steering system and population aging. As Norway - and the world's - population gets older, there is a heated debate about the expected crisis for pension systems and social care services. How age, health, and education in a population plays together, and how the combination of factors actually affect society, and the resulting challenges and opportunities, will be discussed during the two days.

Vegard Skirbekk will speak about "Demographic Change and Productive Potential Across the Globe" as part of second days session. In his keynote he presents new valid and comparable indicators to compare the burden of aging across countries. He shows that in several countries with older populations the cognitive performance is better on the part of populations aged 50+ than in countries with chronologically younger populations. This variation in cognitive functioning levels may be explained by the fact that seniors in some regions of the world experienced better conditions during childhood and adult life, including health and education. Because of the slow process of cohort replacement, those countries whose seniors already have higher cognitive levels today are likely to continue to be at an advantage for several decades to come.

Among the participants are Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, vise president of Statoil ASA, and former Norwegian cabinet minister Kristin Clemet. 

Last edited: 25 January 2013