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Chapter 1: Aging as a Social Process Lesson Notes Stereotypes and Influence on Individuals and Society ● There are many misleading views/images of growing old and old age ○ Such images create stereotypes -exaggerations of particular attributes of a group of individuals - and foster age discrimination and prejudices ( ie. Ageism) ● Stereotypical views are acquired through various mediums, including literature, television, and internet ○ However, stereotypes are changing ○ Ie. Older people portrayed in a wider variety of occupations and social roles that more loosely coincide with reality - active, independent individuals with skills and experiences of value to society Ageism: a form of discrimination ● Process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old (butler) ● Socially constructed way of thinking ● Expressed, foster, perpetuated by media, public policies, workplaces, daily interactions ● Individual ageism vs. Institutionalize ageism Three life course conceptual dimensions ● The life course perspective is a leading theory used in gerontology to study aging related issues ● Life course perspective directs researchers to consider: ○ Life histories and pathways ■ Earlier life experiences affect later ones ■ Shaped by: ■ Socio economic status ■ Gender ■ Ethnicity ■ Race ■ Immigration status ■ Social networks ○ Agency ○ Micro/macro analyses ■ Micro: individuals or small groups ■ Macro: social structure and institution Critical issues and challenges for an aging society ● In studying aging processes and population aging, and gerontology in general, a number of issues should be considered:

1. Aging is not an illness of a disease state - avoid this medicalization view of aging 2. Individual and population aging are linked and co-exist ie. The population is a collection of individuals 3. Population aging will not necessarily weaken society 1. However, population aging will challenge policy, programs, and political issues Ethics in an era of population aging ● Ethical or should questions ○ Should life sustaining technology be used for those with a terminal illness ○ Should age or need be a criterion for entitlement to economic security ○ Should economic and health resources be rationed and priority given to young people ○ Should people pay a portion of their health care costs if they smoke or engage in other unhealthy behaviours ○ Should families be responsible for the care of their dependent elders ○ Should older people have the right to die a good death with dignity and at a time of their choosing ○ Should an older persons driver license be suspended or revoked and if so when and according to what criteria ○ Who should have access to information about dependent elderly persons Protecting human rights in later life ● Rights for people of all ages must be assured, especially for those that are likely to experience discrimination, neglect, abuse ○ Human rights must be universal across the life course ○ Seniors issues are increasingly being addressed as an integral component of a rights based society to improve the quality of life for all older adults What do older Canadian adults view as important issues? ● Current income security measures for poorest seniors are not meeting basic needs ● Current supports for caregivers are insufficient, and some Canadians, especially middle aged women, are forced to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for the ones they love ● Health-care and voluntary sectors are suffering as health-care/volunteers are aging too What do older Canadian adults view as important issues + recommendations for these issues ● Promote active and healthy aging, combat ageism ● Provide federal leadership and coordination through initiatives such as national strategy, national pharmacare program, and federal transfer payments to provinces with highest proportion of seniors ● Ensure financial security of all Canadians by addressing needs of older workers and

developing pension reform ● Facilitate the desire of Canadians to age in their place of choice with adequate housing, transportation, and integrated health and social care services Summary ● Both individual and population age, and these aging processes are linked ● Individuals aging on a chronological, biological, psychological, and social levels ● Aging occurs not just in later life, but involves continuity and change across the life course ● There is considerable heterogeneity in the aging process ● Aging is a gendered experience that tends to favour men ● Canadas population is aging rapidly, and will do so for the next several decades ● Demography is not destiny - population aging will not destroy society ● Older people seek dignity and respect and strive to remain independent and to function as autonomous beings Chapter 1: Aging as a Social Process Textbook Notes Introduction ● Number and proportion of older people in each country increase ● In developed countries this growth has occurred over the past 50 years as fertility rates decreased after the baby boom of 1946-65 while mortality rates have gradually declined ● In developing countries much of the increase in population aging will occur over the next 25 to 40 years as fertility rates decline and sanitation and public health improve ○ With improved sanitation and public health, people will love longer ● Aging in this countries will occur at a faster pace than in more developed countries because of more rapid drops in fertility and mortality rates ○ Known as population aging ○ About 3/4 of the world's older population lives in developing countries ● As individuals and as a society, we cannot ignore the challenges of population aging and the needs of older adults ● The effects of population aging spreads through all spheres of social life: work, the family, leisure, politics, public policy, the economy, health care, housing and transportation ● Aging issues are linked to gender and lgbtq inequality, intergenerational family relations, retirement and economic security, disability, universal access to health care, and social assistance ● We do not age in a vacuum but rather individually and collectively as a family, community, or society

We interact with other individuals and age cohorts across time and within a unique culture, social system, and community ● Just as individuals change when they grow older so do social institutions like family, the health care system the labor force, the economy, and the educational system ● We do not age alone nor do we have total freedom in selecting our life course ● The state of our health at any stage in life is linked to early life experiences; lifelong personal decisions about diet and lifestyle; cost, quality, and availability of good; quality of care provided by support systems ●

Population Aging ● Not until the 20th century that enormous gains in longevity were achieved; evidence: an increase in the average and maximum lifespan of humans, in the average life expectancy at birth, and in the number or centenarians ● Lifespan: the fixed, finite maximum limit of survival for a species ● Life expectancy: the average number of years a person is projected to live at birth or at a specific age ○ It has increased in the past 60 years and will continue to increase although more in developing nations where life expectancy is still quite low because of high infant mortality rates, AIDS, and poor living conditions ● Dramatic increases in life expectancy are part of an evolving demographic and health transition in which there are fewer deaths at birth and in infancy, and more individuals reaching advanced age ● Life expectancy varies by gender, culture, geographic region, ethnicity, race, education, personal habits (diet, exercise, smoking, and drinking), and birth cohort ● Increased life expectancy is only part of the reason that the proportion of older people in a society increases ● The most important factor is a significant decline in the fertility rate which has the most direct and largest effect in shaping the age structure ● Population aging began after the baby boom period when a baby bust period began (1966 to 1980) ○ During this, women had fewer than two children on average, and the first pregnancy was often delayed until a woman was in her mid to late thirties ● Baby bust period was followed by a small baby boom echo from 1980 to mid 1990s ● Since the mid 1990s, fertility rates have fallen further to about 1.6 children per woman ● This low fertility rate is below the replacement rate of at least two children per woman that is needed to replenish the population ● Some of this population decrease is offset by immigrants arriving in Canada, which results in modest positive population growth ● Fears about population aging can interfere with rational policy-making ● With health promotion and health care improvements, increased savings and private investments, high levels of education the older population will not be a drain on societal

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resources Healthier, better educated, and more active older people are an untapped societal resource who can serve as volunteers, caregivers, or paid workers when the labour force shrinks The labelling of older people as a burden to society = apocalyptic demography: A set of beliefs that justifies action on the idea that an aging population has negative implications for societal resources Some of these apocalyptic fears are magnified when there is a global or national economic recession or instability in global markets, and high government debt In the past decade, when governments were faced with an increasing public debt, they built fewer long-term care facilities and reduced the operating budgets of existing facilities ○ Caused seniors and their families to be involved ○ Greater personal and financial cost Many provinces have opted to build or foster development of public and private assisted or supportive housing complexes that provide only a lower level of care for older adults who can manage to live semi independently Increasing evidence that the significant growth in population aging over the next 30-40 years will not bankrupt the pension system, will not be a major contributor to escalating health-care costs and will not cause intergenerational conflict The disproportionate use of health services by older adults in the future will not be a problem ○ There will be improved efficiencies in the health care system ○ Greater use of home care services to offset the need for costly hospital and residential care Aging of the baby boomers + increasing longevity, will necessitate significant investment by governments to make the health and community care systems more innovative, efficient, and effective Changes in the age structure can require careful planning and considerable effort by both the public and private sectors as well as by aging individuals and their families

Individual aging ● Used to focus mainly on the biomedical and biological aspects of aging that caused illness, frailty, dependence, and death ● Today, individual aging is viewed as the interaction of interrelated biological, clinical, psychosocial, and societal factors that affect aging over the life course ● Events such as economic depressions, natural catastrophes, wars, baby booms, technological revolutions, or social movements mould the life trajectories or pathways of individuals or age cohorts ● Life-course perspective: examines the interplay among individual life stories, our social system and institutions, and environments ○ Also looks at the effect of specific historical events at particular times in the life

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course of individuals or age cohorts ○ Through this we understand hoe the problems, advantages, disadvantages, needs, and lifestyles of later life are shaped by earlier life transitions, decisions, opportunities, and experiences ○ Individuals are connected to one another because of the timing, direction, and context of their trajectories or pathways - linked lives ○ Enables us to observe and analyze how different individual or societal events create variations in the aging process within and between cohorts and individuals Some events will have an impact on some age cohorts but not on others ○ Ie. Feminist movement that started in the 1970s has had a profound influence on the life course of women born just before and after the 1970s but in general the feminist movement has had only a modest influence on most women who are now in the later stages of life (80 and older) Past and current social conditions, as well as life histories, can have an impact on different age cohorts ○ Some of these factors have influence on most members of an age cohort throughout their lives ○ Others are affected at only certain period of their lives ○ Or an event may have an effect only on some segments of a birth cohort (depending on social class, gender, education, race) Differences in life courses result from cultural, regional, economic, or political variations in opportunities, lifestyles, values, or beliefs The events a person experiences throughout the life course will vary because of particular social or political events that affect some but not all Understand why there is diversity in aging among individuals in the same birth cohort and in different birth cohorts ○ Arises because of where an individual or a cohort is located in the social structure Social structure: elements of social life and society that constrain, promote, and shape human behaviour ○ Creates or limits life course opportunities and leads to common ways of behaving and acting ○ These elements or rules of social order can be changed and are changed when people ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them ○ While living within a social structure individuals in similar situations can act in different ways and make different decisions ○ Within the life-course perspective, this process is known as agency: a process in which individuals construct their life course by making choices and taking actions

Chapter 2: Historical and Cultural Aspects of Aging Aging in Canada’s multicultural society

Canada is a multicultural society and aging processes are increasingly heterogeneous ○ Cultural fabric of aging population must be considered when designing effective programs/policies for older Canadians ○ Cultural, language, and religious differences in later life create unique challenges for health and health care policy ○ Ie. Some older members of ethnic minorities ■ May not speak English or French ■ Are not knowledgeable about social or health care services ■ Have specific cultural beliefs about health care, death and dying customs ie. Some may adhere to traditional diet which can create dietary and adaptation problems in hospitals or long term care facilities ● 30% of senior Canadians are foreign born compared with 21% of total population ●

Demographic profile: snapshot of immigrant and refugee seniors ● Interprovincial variation exists, it’s BC immigrant and refugee seniors accounting for roughly 41% of all seniors and the smallest numbers seen in the territories ● Senior population of visible minorities grown from 2% in 1981 to 8.1% in 2011 ● While most speak either English or French about 63% of immigrant seniors who arrived in Canada over the past five years were unable to speak either official language ● Women across all age groups are more likely than men to speak neither official language ○ Lack of proficiency in either official language associated with older and married immigrant women and those with a lower level of formal education ○ Refugee women have reported having the greatest difficult in learning the language ●

Multiple dimensions and meanings of culture ● Culture is set of shared meanings to social life past from generation and includes: ○ Values - internal criteria by which members select and judge goals and behaviour in society ○ Beliefs- Conception of the world, and what is thought to be true ○ Norms- expected behaviour in specific social situations ○ Customs - typical way of doing something ○ Knowledge Historical and comparative approaches ● Status of older people varies between societies and within a society at different points in history ● Age is an important factor in the stratification of many societies ● Culture shapes status of older people within a society, their social roles, and the rituals associated with aging and dying

Culture also determines whether age discrimination is a factor in a society’s social organization ○ Negative imagery associated with older persons historically (except women as healers)

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Intersectionality Lens ● Applied to understanding how minority group status and marginalization shape experiences and identity of individuals based on the interaction of culture, age, gender, social class and other salient domains that influence inequality ● Moves beyond notion of advantages or disadvantages accumulating through life, to how race, ethnicity, gender etc. operate on concurrently and interact with others ● Considers disadvantage (and privilege) as fundamentally tied to intersection of multiple inequalities that are fluid over life course and reinforced in social structures ie. Pension, health, and or community care systems ● Understanding intersectionality of cultural inequalities sheds light on ways culture Modernization hypothesis ● 1972 ● An approach in understanding differences or changes in status of elderly across cultures and over time ● Documents societal changes that occurred as result of industrial revolution ● Prior to industrial revolution … hunter/gathering and agrarian peasant ● Hypothesis is inverse association between modernization processes and status of elderly as societies become more modern, the status of the elderly is reduced ● Pre industrial revolution times, two societies existed ○ Hunting and gathering ○ Agrarian ● In hunting and gathering societies, oldest members were considered a valuable source of knowledge ○ Leers held influential positions in social , political, and religious spheres ● Agrarian societies The oldest citizens men controlled the land, were family heads, and had most knowledge about crops ● With modernization and the industrial revolution, the need for labor in towns and cities led to a rapid increase in migration from rural to urban areas ○ When knowledge was no longer needed (when mechanization arrived with the industrial revolution) or was held by the young, elderly people lost power and status ○ Increase in migration to cities esp ● However, been critics for its simplicity ○ Heterogeneity in status decline fret modernization ○ Lower status of older people in some pre industrial societies

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Continued high status of older people in modern societies Alternative reasons for changing status post modernization Regional diversity in filial piety and status of older persons post modernization Other intersecting factors effecting the status of older people

Diversity of aging during modernization ● Industrial revolution an modernization occurred differently across societies and can sometimes be seen in the shifting of elders status ● Impact of modernization on diversity of aging experiences can be seen in different societies Aging in subcultures ● Subculture - with a unique set of values, norms, customs, behaviours, and attitudes - is a homogeneous community distinct from mainstream society ○ Ie. Chinatown, a retirement village, indigenous, equity deserving subcultures ● Convergent subcultures are those that eventually assimilate into mainstream society ● Persistent subcultures maintain total separation and unique identity ● Members in some subculture groups experience discrimination and marginalization ● Many unique issues related to health, health care, needs, discrimination that require specific programs and policies in indigenous, racial, ethnic, and immigrant populations Canada’s cultural genocide of indigenous peoples ● About half life in urban areas with those living on reserves ● A close knit community, sometimes suspicious and resentful of mainstream socie...