Tag: ageing population

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) provides a multidisciplinary examination of England’s ageing population by exploring factors ranging from income and social inequalities to physical and mental health. Running for over 20 years, the study integrates biological, genetic, medical, and social data from more than 19,000 participants and is particularly insightful for social policy decisions. Compelling findings show links between inequality and aging rate, and a noticeable rise in social isolation.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a scientific examination of how the population of England is ageing from a multidisciplinary perspective.

ELSA explores how a number of factors such as income, wealth, social inequalities, past life experiences, work, spending patterns, physical and mental health and well being are all related through the ageing process.

The study has been going for over 20 years now and the data helps understand the determinants of healthy ageing over a long period of time. It has also contributed to social policy decisions around pensions and social care. 

ELSA started in 2000 with a sample of 10 000 people and their partners, to date there have been over 19 000 participants. It is a a cohort study with the same people being interviewed every two years, 

The study collects a range of biological, genetic, medical, physiological, psychological and social data.

This is an excellent example of a very long standing longitudinal study.

Key questions asked of respondents include: 

  • Basic demographic data
  • Work, income, benefits, savings
  • Health mental and physical 
  • Social and civic engagement 
  • Spending patterns
  • Also end of life with relatives of the deceased. 

Some years involve more in-depth questions and cognitive tests. Every four years a nurse visits to collect blood samples and measures other  health indicators. 

Respondents have recently been interviewed in more depth about their retrospective life histories. Participants have also granted access to their financial and health records.

ELSA: Main aims  

To examine the ways in which different aspects of life are linked: 

  • What is the relationship between financial security and health? 
  • Why does the health of those in lower social positions decline faster? 
  • How have changes in pension arrangements affected decisions about retirement? 
  • How do social relationships change with age, and affect health and wellbeing? 
  • How does declining cognitive function affect the ability to plan a financial future?

ELSA has been designed to be compatible with the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) so direct comparisons can be made. There are 15 similar studies in other countries, meaning broader cross national comparisons can also be made. 

Data from ELSA has been used to model pensions, welfare and disability policies. It has also been used to contribute to policies to get older people back to work and to develop national strategies for loneliness.

ESLA: Selected Findings and contributions 

The report breaks down the main findings into several different areas, below are just a few selected key points:

Inequality drives every aspect of ageing…

  • Greater wealth was linked to slower decline on all health measures used: for example the reduction in walking speed was 38 per cent greater in the lowest quarter of the wealth range than in the highest.
  • People from deprived neighbourhoods more likely to feel socially isolated.
  • Lack of education earlier on life means worse memory deterioration in later life. 

Inadequate health and social care 

The research revealed a large gap between the care that is recommended and care which is actually received, particularly for conditions most strongly associated with growing older….

bar chart showing lack of social care in the UK

Increasing social isolation 

The participants, all aged 52 and older, were asked in 2004 if they had a partner, how often they saw friends and family and whether they were members of clubs, organisations, committees or religious groups. They were also asked if they sometimes felt they lacked company. Around one in five were socially isolated or felt lonely, or both. 

The study followed those people up in 2012 to see how many had died.

 Other social factors that could lead to isolation were taken into account – a lack of social networks was known to be more common among people who were poorer, who had health problems or who had only basic education. In the most isolated fifth of the group around one in five had died, compared with one in eight in the least isolated.

Those who are isolated or lonely die sooner – but a range of background issues such as poverty, poor health and lack of education are a key part of the picture and are linked to mortality.

In England and Wales the proportion of 45- 64 year-olds living alone rose by 53 per cent between 1996 and 2012.

However a counter trend to this is caused by rising housing costs. There has been an 8.5% increase in adult children living with 50-64 year olds. 

Work and Pensions 

Objective measures of poor health only explains 15% of the decline in work for those aged 50-70. 

Among those aged 60-64 in 2013/14 around a quarter of men and almost four in ten women are well enough to work but are not working.

Those in better health are significantly more likely to carry on working, along with married men and highly educated women.

Among those who had full-time jobs, the hours worked were dropping. The change took place across the social spectrum and affected the full age range as well as those in different types of job

When planning for pensions, men underestimate their life expectancy by 10 years and women by nine years. 

ELSA and Social Changes

In 2000, average life expectancy for men in the UK was 75 and for women 80. 

What we learned in the last 20 years maybe something different to what we learn in the next 20 years!

In the first decade of the 21st Century life expectancy increased: the over-50s now constitute 40 per cent of the British population and by 2050 three in 10 will be over 60. And though there are signs the increase may have stalled, there is much that is positive to say.

By 2010 the figures had risen to 79 and 83, though no further increase occurred between then and 2020.But the health and social care needs of older people have grown, too.

We have learned a lot from the last 20 years of ELSA, but already what we have learned may not be relevant going forwards! Times are a changing!

Signposting

This material is directly relevant to the families and households module, part of A-level sociology.

Social Problems facing Britain in 2020…

My top 14 social problems facing Britain in 2020:

  1. Pollution and the environment
  2. Inequality, low pay and poverty
  3. Inflation/ cost of living/ especially housing
  4. unemployment and underemployment
  5. Race relations
  6. The Ageing population
  7. Crime, law and order
  8. Mental health – depression/ anxiety (/suicide)
  9. Sexual inequalities
  10. Drug and alcohol abuse
  11. Lack of faith (trust) in government
  12. Immigration/ overpopulation

This is a ‘first thoughts’ off the top of my head ranking based on a combination of what I know about these social issues and social theory/ research evidence.

Also, this isn’t comprehensive – I’ve taken the above from the Ipsos-Mori September 2019 survey – so really this is my ‘top 14’ social issues as identified by 1027 members of the British public in 2019.

This is what the British public thought were the most important social issues in September 2019….

Actually not quite, I’ve added in mental health and sexual inequalities just because I think they deserve a mention, unlike at least 95.5% of the British population sampled last September!

A broadly Marxist Rationale for my Ranking

I’ve put pollution and the environment at number 1 as if we don’t stop living within planetary limits soon we’re just lining up more social problems in the future – the more we consume and pollute the fewer resources there are to go round and the fewer resources the more inequality, the higher the cost of living, the more social unrest and so on.

Inequality comes second following Wilkinson and Picket’s work in the Spirit Level – inequality seems to be the number one variable correlated with all other social problems. I’ve included poverty with inequality as (simplifying to the extreme) in Britain we only really have relative poverty, which is a function of inequality.

At three is the ultimate economic challenge – keeping the cost of living down. I think this is fundamentally related to inequality – for example landlords owning several houses and renting them out make themselves rich while impoverishing their tenants.

I’ve included unemployment and underemployment at four as these is these are not only fundamentally linked to inequality, but also a future challenge as technological change strips out jobs from the economy.

Race relations goes in at five because Racism does still exist and it is the most common tool for scapegoating the causes of all other social problems. If we can just get rid of silly notions of Racism, the masses might direct their attention at the elites who create most of our social problems.

The ageing population is next as it’s something of a ticking time bomb – we haven’t yet addressed as a society how we are going to pay for the increased health and social care costs of people in old age in the context of a less favourable dependency ratio in future years.

To skip to the final two, I regard these as positive things – lack of faith in national politics I think is a necessary precursor to more decentralized, autonomous solutions to social problems and as to immigration and migration more generally, not only can this solve the ‘problem’ of the ageing population, I think in general we need more of it – if nothing else to combat the problem of racial prejudice!

Japan’s Declining and Ageing Population

Last year Japan’s population declined by 300, 000, to 126 million, and and its population is predicted to decline to 87 million by 2040.

Japan also has an ‘ageing population’ – it is already one of the world’s oldest nations, which a median age of 46, and its predicted that by 2040 there will be three senior citizens for every child under 15, the opposite of the situation in 1975.

ageing population sociology

ageing population Japan

This is an interesting case study relevant to the ‘ageing population‘ topic within A-level sociology’s families and household’s option (AQA 7192/2).

Why is this happening?

Excluding Monaco, Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world – 83.7, and a very low fertility rate of 1.45. However, these figures are not too dissimilar from some European countries, so what really explains Japan’s declining population is it low immigration rate – only 1.8% of Japanese are foreign, compared to 8.6% in the UK for example!

What will the consequences be:

Nicholas Eberstadt argues that we already seeing some of the consequences:

  • Labour shortages, especially in care work, hospitality, construction and agriculture.
  • 400 school closures a year.
  • The emergence of ‘ghost towns’ as the population decreases
  • Increased burden on elderly welfare – by 2060 36% of its population will be 65 or older.

Eberstadt suggests that Japan’s future has only been imagined in Science Fiction (perhaps Kim Stanley Robinson can offer some help?).

Why is the Fertility Rate so Low?

It’s basically a combination of two factors:

  • Economic problems – 50% of the population are in precarious jobs, and economic insecurity is a key reason for not having children. Also, if couples were in a position to have children childcare is too expensive for both partners to remain in work, so this may scupper the desires of even those in permanent jobs!
  • Traditional gender values remain intact – Japan is the 114th most gender unequal country in the world – traditional and patriarchal values remain in-tact – women don’t want children out of wedlock or with men with no economic prospects – which is about half of all men in Japan!

Why is Migration so Low?

Japan is geographically remote and culturally homogeneous. Japan has long discouraged immigration – they see it as a threat to Japans’s culture and low crime rate – in fact they point to migration across Europe as an example of its negative impacts.

How is the government going to tackle the crisis?

There are a range of measures…

  • Government sponsored ‘speed dating’ services.
  • By providing longer maternity leave and childcare
  • To offset the shrinking labour force through a ‘robot revolution’.

Is there an Upside?

Well, there’s more land per head, and because Japan is the first to transition into what will likely become a global trend, it’s an opportunity for it to become a world leader in technologies that can assist an ageing population.

Sources:

Adapted from The Week 2nd December 2017.

Sociology in the News – The Ageing Population and The Crisis in Social Care

A couple of not very pleasant news-items which relate to the problems of the ‘ageing population’:

The U.K. is on the brink of a social care crisis according to The Independent (November 2016) – with local authorities saying they could face a £2.6 billion funding gap by 2020.

According to The Guardian (December 2016), this is because funding has been slashed by 10%; there has been a 25% reduction in the number of people receiving help, and a third of all care homes face bankruptcy after cuts in the fees paid by local authorities.

All of this of course means that elderly people receive a lower quality of care, either in care-homes, or through reduced numbers of home-visits, but Age UK (Sept 2015) further calculates that up to a million people who have difficulties with basic activities such as getting dressed get no help at all.

All of this suggests that the problems of the ageing population are very much real, and given the present government’s neoliberal ideology, seem likely to get worse.

 

 

 

The Consequences of an Ageing Population

healthy life expectancy isn’t keeping pace, and the sheer cost of looking after the elderly in the context of family-individualism make the ageing population a problem!

Populations across Europe are getting older which can create social problems related to higher levels of poor health among older people and a greater financial and caring ‘burden’ on younger generations.

But careful social planning can help to overcome these challenges.

britains-ageing-population

What are the consequences of an ageing population?

This is a summary of a recent Radio 4 Analysis podcast – Three Score Years and Twenty on Ageing Britain. It’s of clear relevance to the demography topic within the 7191 families and households module….

Here are some of the main points.

In 1850,half the population in England were dead before they reached 46. Now half the population in England are alive at 85; and 8 million people currently alive in the UK will make it to 100 years or more. And if we extrapolate that to Europe, we can say 127 million Europeans are going to live to 100.

Hans Rosling points out that: We reached the turning point five years ago when the number of children stopped growing in the world. We have 2 billion children. They will not increase. The increase of the world population from now on will be a fill up of adults.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt: The two biggest issues that we face as an ageing society are the sustainability of the NHS and the sustainability of the pension system; and within the NHS, I include the social care system as part of that.

The basic problem we have in Northern European countries is the generational tension between individualism and communal responsibility – Across the generations within a typical family we have become more individualistic and less collective/ communal:

People in their 80s (who grew up in the 1960s) are generally very individualistic – they have retired into property wealth and are unwilling to relinquish the independence this gives them. They have also socialised their children into being more independent: most people today in their 50s (the children of those who are in their 80s) have bought into this – The family norm is one of the typical 50 year old living an independent life with family, miles away from their own parents.

Grandparents today of course help out with childcare occasionally and pay regular visits, but they are generally not taking a day to day role in childcare, and finances are kept separate.  This arrangement is mutual – People in their 80s don’t want to be burdens on their children, they want them to have the freedom to live their own lives – to be able to work and raise their children without having to care for them in their old age. (So I suppose you might call the 2000s the era of the individualised family).

(This is very different to what it used to be like in the UK, and what it is still like in many other parts of the world where grandparents live close by and are an integral part of family life, taking an active role in raising their grandchildren on a day to day basis. Various interviewees from less developed countries testify to this, and to the advantages of it.)

Within this context of increasing ‘familial-individualism‘ a number of problems of the ageing population are discussed:

Increased family individualism

One of the main problems which this increasing ‘familial-individualism’ creates for people in their 80s is one of increasing isolation and loneliness as their friends and neighbours move away or die.

One proposed solution is for older people to be prepared to move into communal supported housing where there are shared leisure facilities, like many people do in Florida. However, people are quite set in their ways in the UK and so this is unlikely. A second solution, which some immigrants are choosing is to return to thier country of origin where there are more collectivist values, trading in a relatively wealthy life in the UK for less money and more community abroad.

Healthy Life Expectancy

A second problem is that healthy life expectancy is not keeping pace with life-expectancy, and there are increasing numbers of people in their 80s who spend several years with chronic physical conditions such as arthritis, and also dementia – which require intensive social care.

healthy life expectancy.png
Low ‘healthy life expectancy’ is more of a problem for the most deprived

As with the first point above, this is more of a social problem when children do not see it as their duty to care for their elderly parents – It is extremely expensive to provide round the clock care for chronic conditions for several years, and this puts a strain on the NHS. Basically, the welfare state cannot cope with both pensions and chronic care.

One potential solution to the above is mentioned by Sally Greengross: the Germans in some cases now export older people to Eastern European countries because they can’t afford – or they say they can’t – to provide all the services they need in Germany itself. Could this be the future of chronic elderly care in the UK – Exporting dementia patients to poorer countries?

However, the idea of care-homes themselves are not dismissed when it comes to end of life care – the consensus seems to be that the quality of care in UK elderly care homes is generally very good, and better than your typically family could provide (despite all the not so useful scare programmes in the media).

No money left for the young

A third problem is for those in their 50s – with their parents still alive and ‘sucking money out of the welfare state’ there is less left for everything else – and this has been passed down to the youngest generation.

As a result people in their 50s now face the prospect of their own children living at home for much longer and having to help them with tuition fees and mortgage financing, meaning that their own plans for retirement in their late-50s/ early 60s are looking less likely – In other words, the next two generations are bearing a disproportionate cost of the current ageing population.

Worryingly, there is relatively little being done about this in government circles – Yes, the state pension age has been raised, and measures have been taken to get people to bolster their own private pensions, but this might be too little to late, and it looks like little else is likely to be done – The issue of the ageing population and the cost of welfare for the elderly is not a vote-winner after all.

The programme concludes by pointing out that pensions and care homes are only part of the debate. What will also be needed to tackle the problems of the ageing population is a more age-integrated society, a possible renegotiation at the level of the family so that grandparents are more integrated on a day to day basis in family life (trading of child care for a level of elderly care) and also social level changes – to make work places and public places more accessible for the elderly who might be less physically able than those younger than them.

Here’s the full transcript of the show –analysis-ageing

Further Reading 

The Future of an Ageing Population (Government Report)

Underfunded and Overstretched – The Crisis in Care for the Elderly – 2016 Guardian article

Related Posts 

The question of why we have an ageing population is explained by the combination of the long term decrease in both the birth rates and death rates dealt with in these two posts: Explaining changes to the birth rate, and Explaining the long term decline of the death rate.

A related topic in the Global Development module is the question of whether ‘overpopulation’ is a problem – an informed view on this topic is that of Hans Rosling’s who argues that ‘overpopulation’ isn’t really a problem at all because of the rapid global decline in birth rates.

This mind map on The consequences of an ageing population offers you an easier summary or the topic compared to this post.

Other Summaries of Thinking Allowed Podcasts 

Thinking Allowed really is an excellent resource for A level Sociology – here are two other summaries of recent Thinking Allowed Podcasts…

Why do White Working Class Kids Lack Aspiration?

Sociological Research on Gangs