Posts Tagged ‘Seniors’

More Interesting Stuff from the Census We Will Never Know Again

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

As I have said before numerous times in this blog I believe that the changes the federal government is making to the 2011 Canadian Census by removing the mandatory long form are completely boneheaded. Here is another example of data that will no longer be available:

In Richmond, a suburb of Metro Vancouver, 40% of the 65+ households live in a condo. In New Westminster, another suburb, 61% do. Is that because it’s easier for seniors in New West to downsize? Proportionately, there are twice as many apartments in New West than there are in Richmond (another long form fact) so that’s one possible explanation. Another possible explanation could be that seniors in New West have lower incomes than seniors in Richmond and can’t afford to live in single detached houses. Here’s how that hypothesis pans out: the average income of 65+ households in Richmond is $52,385; in New West, $47,010. So that’s another possible explanation. Or perhaps 65+ households in New West are smaller and don’t need the space of a single detached house. And the facts? 57% of 65+ households in New West are non-family households, meaning most will be single person households. The comparable figure in Richmond is 38%.

Well who cares says Stephen Harper, Tony Clement, and the Fraser Institute.

Communities that want to become elder-friendly care. They need to understand the housing situation of people living in their communities now, as well as how the community can accommodate people who might move there in the future.

For-profit and not-for-profit developers of seniors’ housing care too. Spend $20 million on a housing project without understanding the market? Not wise. Hold on a minute though say SH, TC, and the FI, if they need that information they can darn well go and get it themselves. But they can’t—they won’t be able to replicate the comprehensiveness or the reliability of census data, even if they spend huge sums of money trying to do so.

Many people and companies of all sorts in the seniors’ housing and health care industry will be hobbled by the absence of the long form. The whole situation is, as I have said on earlier occasions, very sad.

If only more people read this blog! A Canadian Press story appearing on August 2nd opines that the Tories believe not enough people really care about the census and the whole thing will blow over. I hope that is not true.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Future, Market Studies, News, Seniors' Housing | No Comments »

Are disability rates improving? And if they are, why?

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Many people (myself included) share the view that disability rates among the seniors’ population have been declining. For example, here’s a headline from a National Association of Aging document dated May, 2001: Dramatic Decline in Disability Continues for Older Americans. And what’s the evidence? Between 1994 and 1999, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 with disabilities declined by 2.6% per year.

In answer to the obvious question: “why”?, the article suggests several possible reasons—improvements in maternal health early in the 20th Century;  better control of infectious childhood diseases; behavioural changes such as declines in the incidence of smoking; better management of diseases such as hypertension;  better drugs; and even increases in education levels.

But a recent article in Public Policy and Aging Report suggests that declines in disability rates are due not to medical science, but to “disability-friendly” environmental changes including curb cuts, disabled access ramps and elevators, and transportation services. Improvements in assistive devices (walkers, wheelchairs, scooters) have also enabled people with mobility impairments to get around better on their own.

The Public Policy and Aging Report article is focused mostly on physical impairments that impede a person’s ability to interact with the built and social environment but it also refers briefly to the positive impact of higher education levels on rates of cognitive impairment.

It is interesting to think about this. Disability is not defined as an impairment per se, but as a “social construct insofar as it reflects the ease or difficulty that individuals with physical impairments experience interacting with the built and social environment.”

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Future, Senior Housing, Seniors' Housing | Comments Off