How will population ageing affect future end of life care?

a post by Anna Bone for the OUP [Oxford University Press] blog


Image 12419. CC0 via pxhere.

Increasing population ageing means that deaths worldwide are expected to rise by 13 million to 70 million per year in the next 15 years. As a result, there is an urgent need to plan ahead to ensure we meet the growing end of life care needs of our population in the future.

Understanding where people die, and how this could change in the future, is vital to ensuring that health services are equipped to support people’s needs and preferences at the end of life. As researchers at the Cicely Saunders Institute, King’s College London, we investigated trends in place of death in England and Wales, and found that deaths occurring in care homes could more than double in the next 25 years if recent trends continue.

Using official records on over five and a half million deaths, as well as population forecasts, we estimated the number of people who will die in a range of different settings in years to come. The intention behind this study is that it will help to guide future planning of health and social care. From 2004 to 2014, the proportion of deaths occurring in care homes increased from 17% to 21%, with numbers rising from 85,000 to 106,000 per year. If this trend continues, the number of people dying in care homes will double to over 220,000 per year by 2040, and care homes will overtake hospitals as the most common place to die. Home deaths are also projected to increase over this period to over 216,000 deaths a year. Together, this means that deaths in the community are expected to account for over two-thirds of all deaths by 2040.

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More migrant workers needed to offset ageing population, says IMF

an article by Richard Partington published in the Guardian

Fund’s report advises advanced economies against greater controls on migration


Annual EU migration to Britain fell by 75,000 in the year to September, according to ONS figures. Photograph: David Wootton/Alamy

The International Monetary Fund has said advanced economies such as Britain, the US and Japan risk being overwhelmed by their ageing populations, and calls on them to throw open their borders to more migrant workers in response.

Within the next few decades, working-age adults will need to support double the number of elderly people than they do now, putting immense pressure on welfare systems and wiping out as much as 3% of potential economic output by 2050, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook report.

The Fund’s comments come as the number of migrant workers arriving in Britain from Europe is already in sharp decline following the Brexit vote almost two years ago, and as populist parties in many western countries push their governments to curb immigration.

The analytical chapters of its report, published on Monday, said: “Dramatic shifts in demographic structure projected in advanced economies could overwhelm the ability of policies to offset the forces of ageing.

“[This] underscores the need to rethink migration policies to boost labor supply in advanced economies.”

Without government intervention, the IMF said the current labour force participation rate, which estimates the number of people eligible for work who are in employment, could fall by as much as 5.5% on average across advanced economies over the next 30 years.

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I wish I could find the graph I saw a while back which showed clearly how the number of people in the working population was declining as people passed from working to retired.

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Life expectancy at birth and at age 65 by local areas in the United Kingdom, 2004–06 to 2008–10

an article in Population Trends Volume 146 (2012)

Summary

This bulletin presents male and female period life expectancy at birth and at age 65 for the UK, constituent countries, regions, counties and local areas. New figures are presented for 2008–10, with previously released figures for 2004–06 to 2007–09 for comparison purposes. The tables included show life expectancies for UK countries and regions in England, local areas with the highest and lowest life expectancies, and life expectancies for all local areas in rank order. Information is also given about the context, calculation and interpretation of life expectancy figures.

Full text in an ONS Statistical Bulletin (PDF 22pp)

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Understanding the worklessness dynamics and characteristics of deprived areas

DWP Research Report 779 by Helen Barnes, Elisabeth Garratt, David McLennan and Michael Noble (Oxford Institute of Social Policy, University of Oxford)

Summary

Research was commissioned to use individual level data from the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (WPLS) to try to shed light on some unanswered questions about the dynamics of worklessness in deprived areas.

It has been suggested that in certain deprived neighbourhoods individuals make the transition from worklessness into employment and move away to less deprived areas. As these people move away they are replaced by inflows of other workless people who may themselves find employment and move on in a similar way. Therefore, although people experience positive individual level employment outcomes whilst living in a neighbourhood, the area may change little over time and may appear unresponsive to initiatives aimed at reducing worklessness. This research examines this issue and the associated policy implications.

The research classifies deprived areas according to whether they were an ‘improver’ or ‘non-improver’ area, over the period 2004 to 2007, as well as identifying ‘transition’ areas (a subset of ‘non-improver’ areas characterised by high population churn). We have published a full list of these classifications for each Lower Super Output Area in Great Britain, to enable local partners to conduct their own follow-up research into the issues locally. This has been simultaneously published alongside this report.

Full report published November 2011 (PDF 87 pages)
ISBN 978 1 908523 31 0

LSOA tables for DWP RR779 (Excel (97-2003) 8.79 MB)

Hazel’s comment:
As one does with reports of this nature I looked for my home town and, as expected, Kettering contains some nasty pockets of deprivation. The area in which I live also has some very long-term worklessness into the third generation of “dealers” (not in drugs, although there is some of that, but in anything that can raise a bit of cash).

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The UK’s population mapped

via The Guardian

How many people live in your local authority?

How many children and retired people are there?

Is the population going up or down?

Click on a local authority to explore the data, or use the dropdown menu below to see more maps

Mapped using Google Fusion tables

• Interactive map

Hazel’s comment:

This is FUN!

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