Societal transformations due to the increase in human lifespan : the next frontier
Retirement: an aspiration, or a cause for concern? Once synonymous with « defeat », then associated with old age, then with a fine period of guaranteed income, the equivocal term of retirement now evokes fear of status and conditions change.
Increase in life expectancy in good health and autonomy is a sign of hope. At the same time it urges us to think about a new collective and individual, public and private organization. Not setting generations or age groups against each other is a precondition to accompany this deep change smoothly.
We will have to create places of dialogue to enable the expression of different reasoning and aspirations, but with a shared vocabulary, for example in the form of “young and elderly people consultative councils” associated to local authorities.
Life expectancy is the next frontier.
Collective concern upon climate change is a fact. Demographic change1 calls in the same way for a reorganization of our lives.
These observations apply to 65 million of French people as to 500 million European people.
Age average in the EU27 was 31 years old in 1950, 40,4 years old in 2008, and will be 47,9 years old in 20602.
Many well-researched forecasts confirm these analyses: a population that ages worldwide, at different paces, and a general move toward cities.
The slow ageing pace of the French population explains why this revolution is a “silent” one.
The ratio of people over 65 years old took 110 years to increase twofold in France, but only 42 years in Germany and 24 years in Japan3.
Until recently professional activity was the key when analyzing life cycles:
- before : learning period,
- during : professional activity,
- and after : retirement when it existed, or just old age, synonymous with the end of life.
In the aftermath of World War II retirement age and life expectancy coincided: actual benefit of retirement was de facto a privilege.
Beyond the increase in life expectancy, the right to retire when 60 years old, and, most of all, a massive resort to early retirement plans have created a long “retirement stage” after professional activity, but before actual old age.
In the same time, as activity begins later due to an increase in studying time, the effective period of activity has shrunk. The perception of age in the working world is also relative: at 22 a top model is considered “old”, at 50 one is “senior” in a firm…
As we have been gaining each year for the last twenty years a trimester more to our life expectancy, in less than twenty years, 20 million French people will be over 60 and 15 million under 20.
Time has come to shift the statistical estimation of old age beyond 60 or even 65 years old.
According to sociologists, this long period of inactivity, which is perceived as well as a privileged status as a weight on public finance, reinforces the negative image of old age notably when it is too early categorized.
Moreover a consensus develops around considering ageing as a natural process beyond the fields of handicap, healthcare and medico social policies.
Ageing at home : a shared aspiration
If ageing is a chance, housing can be a solution.
The best part of ageing people and their family wish to stay at home with old age. Statistics confirms that 85% of people over 90 are living at home.
Listening to this desire leads us to ask ourselves what “home” is.
Three sociologists, specialists of housing, ageing and the urban environment, addressed this question with complementary points of view.
Vincent Caradec4 defines home as a familiar place where the person feels good. With age comes an estrangement from a too quickly changing outer world. For the living place to remain familiar, the person has to be close to a well known environment: neighborhood, shops, and also familiar beloved small things and objects. Maintaining this feeling of familiarity is the condition for the new home or the adaptation of the home to be accepted.
Elderly people want to keep their distance from old age, which is seen as negative. One has to take it into account when adapting their housing and environment. For example, people reluctant to subscribe to an electronic alarm device system use cell phones, as this last object is not a marker of old age.
According to Monique Eleb5, home is a constituent part of the person, who constructs his/her identity by letting traces, clues about who (s)he was, who (s)he is and who (s)he would like to be. Therefore, to consider moving home, if this is not one’s own choice, deprives the person of all prospects. The link with the past is broken and the future does not exist.
Bernard Ennuyer6 relies on the Latin definition of “domus” to demonstrate that home is where one is “master in one’s own house”.
Theses analyses apply to traditional housing as well as to shared intergenerational solutions, where space delimitation is essential.
These three approaches enlighten us on the limits of home moving, but also on the strong reluctance of elderly people towards the adaptation of their home, which must be explained and negotiated with the person in order to be accepted.
This perception is even stronger when adapting means bringing in hospital- like equipments.
Issues of territories…
This transverse sociological approach must not mask difficult personal situations: low income, poor conditions of housing, territorial disparities.
If the best part of the population are urban people, the best part of territories are rural areas.
The specificities of rural areas in France and in the European Union call for a special attention. Rural territories are rightly considered as central issues of territorial cohesion at European level.
The demographic pyramids of French regions are heavily contrasted.
Limousin is the region where the percentage of people older than 75 is the highest. Auvergne is close to these figures.
These two regions have in common to have developed innovative strategies, supported by the Chamber of Trades for Limousin and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Auvergne, to address ageing in their rural territories.
…and of European economic, social and territorial cohesion
Housing and ageing are not within the competence of the European Union. But both are such issues that a European approach has progressively emerged and taken form within planning documents for the next twenty years.
To give a few broader elements of appreciation, in 2008:
- Estonia was the youngest UE country with an age average of 33 years old;
- Germany was the oldest country (age average of 44 years old), but also the most populated;
- In France, the average was 38 years old.
Eurostat projection for 2010-2030 forecasts:
- A decrease of 12% of the youth population, of 16% for young adults, and of 10% for adults;
- A38% increase of senior people aged between 65 and 79, and a 57% increase of people over 80.
In the long term, by 2050-2060,
- Slovakia and Poland may become the “oldest” European countries with a 55 years old age average;
- The United Kingdom may become the youngest European country (33 years old age average) and the most populated;
- France would stay in second position in terms of population;
- Germany would downgrade to third position, with a marked fall in the number of inhabitants;
- In the same way, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria may lose 18 to 38% of their population.
The demographic trend of ageing in Europe is of such coherence that it raises the interest of all Member States and European institutions.
Global and massive ageing of the European population, decrease in the number of inhabitants, and unbalance of the age structure impact heavily on the number, structure and contribution of the working population.
Very recently, the “European Union 2020” strategy, issued in March 2010 by the European Commission as a replacement for the Lisbon strategy, refers to ageing on five occasions.
The report to the European Council from the Reflection Group on the future of the European Union 2020-2030, which was presented in May 2010, titles one of its seven chapters “the challenge of demography: ageing, migration and integration”.
It develops the pressures that the ageing of the population will exert on health- and welfare systems, on economic growth…
The European Summit of Local Governments that took place in Barcelona in February 2010 decided in a common statement to take part in a long term strategy supporting innovation in response to population ageing.
During a meeting initiated by the CECODHAS7 in Brussels on the report “Adaptation of Housing to the Challenge of Demographic Change8”, Members of the European Parliament from the Urban and Ageing Intergroups expressed their interest to address the issue of the adaptation of housing to ageing at EU level. This meets the objectives of most national policies as well.
Innovation and initiative in Europe do not confine to a small elite of businesses, local governments, or persons. They aim at improving European people’s daily life on the long term.
A European platform open to private and public businesses, to networks of operators, to local elected representatives, to Members of the European Parliament and to European Administration, may be useful to prepare 2012 as European Year for Active Ageing & Intergenerational Solidarity. This idea is developed in our twelfth proposition.
Adapt, or move home? Prevent.
By increasing the comfort of living and security in mobility9, prevention in housing and in the public space, when properly designed and well accepted, offers a double benefit: preserving the advantages of a well-known environment and limiting public spending10.
The British experience in adapting the housing of people over 65 years old proceeded from the acknowledgement that social care expenditures would considerably increase with the people remained in unsuitable housing.
The time of life in good health condition increases more quickly than life expectancy. Housing adaptation has to match this evolution to prevent dependence resulting from domestic accidents.
Spotting difficult situations and evaluating the conditions of comfort essential to the security of the equipments and of the persons, are a prerequisite.
This report aims to propose integrated solutions involving professional competences, public intervention and participation from private players.
Indeed, adapting in order to prevent implies:
- Spotting difficult situations, diagnosing risks,
- Facilitating public interventions,
- Organizing homogeneous professional intervention within controlled prices and deadlines,
- Mobilizing financing solutions to compensate for the low income of the most vulnerable seniors,
- Mobilizing the assets of people who do not have sufficient cash flow to face these costs,
- Modifying the rules applicable to co-owned properties in order to adapt common spaces,
- Defining a legal framework enabling mutual aid within intergenerational housing,
- Raising public awareness of this issue in a positive perspective,
- Setting the debate in a European perspective which is the pertinent scale of analysis.
These propositions are linked to each other.
They concern ageing people who are still independent, whether owners of their homes or not, but who cannot afford to adapt it.
They are based on a cross-participation of very different players: well-known public entities, private operators, Chambers of Commerce, Trade and Industry, financial institutions, and all professional entities that chose to engage in a qualifying process in order to train oneself, share experiences and measure efficiency.
These propositions aim at reducing public spending by adapting the legal framework while maintaining public control. That is why eventually an evaluation of the efficiency of these new measures will be interesting.
1 The average age of the world population was 23 in 1975 and 28 in 2009. It is expected to be 38 in 2050 (Christiane Crépin, Families and Family Policies Worldwide, Evolutions, Stakes, Perspectives – March 2010)
2 The ratio of non-working population is significant: one out of five in 2009.
3 Forecast is 25 years for Morocco and China, 17 years for Syria.
4 Professor of Sociology at Lille 3 University. Member of French High Council for Population and Family
5 Monique Eleb: Psychologist and Sociologist, Professor at Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture, Head of the Architecture, Culture and Society Laboratory
6 Bernard Ennuyer, Engineer, Sociologist, Head of an Association for Home services
7 Comité Européen de Coordination de l’Habitat Social (The European Liaison Committee for Social Housing : 28 million houses, 45 million inhabitants)
8 « L’adaptation de l’habitat au défi démographique » Muriel BOULMIER, Chairman of CILIOPÉE Group, Chair of CECODHAS Ageing ad-hoc working group, report to France’s Ministry of Housing, october 2010.
9 GARP and CERTU studies on mobility and accidentology of elderly people.
10 As may be seen with the United Kingdom « lifetime homes, lifetime neighborhoods » experience (a public funded housing prevention-adaptation initiative).
