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The Faces of Aging Research Director: Sarah Fortin. While immigration flows and the birth rate were the principal demographic forces in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, aging is the main challenge of the first half of the twenty-first. Due to a low birth rate, increases in longevity and the coming of age of the baby boomers, Canada faces rapid change in the age structure of its population. One of the key challenges when trying to assess the impact of this process is that it will unfold over four decades. While we have a good understanding of elders' present needs and condition, it is difficult to assess tomorrow's social, economic, technological, policy, scientific and environmental contexts and how they will affect working and retirement decisions, living conditions and intergenerational interaction. With these caveats in mind, Faces of Aging will explore four main topics: retirement decisions and labour force participation; increasing privatization of risk in terms of income, health and care-giving services; implications for the public sector and the social union; and end-of-life issues. The program aims to strengthen Canadian public policies, addressing both their means (taxation, services, transfers, regulations) and their ends (equity, efficiency, welfare), and to inform the larger public debate. It will be draw upon a comparative approach and be informed by a life-cycle perspective to examine patterns of transition. Furthermore, it will consider intergenerational implications both from an individual and family basis (the care burden of children and grandchildren, the accumulation of resources and support across generation) as well as from a public basis (tradeoffs in public spending and the financing of programs dedicated to older versus younger generations). Studies in progress:
Documents published to date:
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