Income and lifestyles in later life in Britain
A. Soule
Policy Analyst, HM Treasury, London
As people get older they tend to retire from paid work, and so their main sources of income shift from employment and self-employment to state and private pensions and other benefits. With increases in life expectancy, people now have a longer period in retirement than ever before. Income allows people to access the good and services which determine their material standard of living, and allows them to participate in society more widely. Older people often view their financial resources as being pivotal to having choice and independence (Cook et al, 2004). Their lifestyles may also be influenced by their perception of financial security in later years. Both income and wealth are viewed to provide older people with a level of security and choice. This presentation reports on research examining the financial resources of older people in Britain, their wealth and how they use these resources, published in the Focus on Older People, ONS/DWP (2005). The presentation also reports on evidence on how older people spend their time in the context of leisure activities. The Family Resources Survey provides a high quality nationally representative source of information on income and is used within this research, along with other data from the Department of Work and Pensions, the Time Use Survey and ELSA.
Maria Evandrou
Centre for Research on Ageing, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton
Older people are key users of health and social care services. In 2002/03 people aged 65 and over, comprising 16 per cent of the population, accounted for 47 per cent of total spending on hospital and community health services in England (DoH, 2004). High health care costs are associated with birth, but expenditure per head then decreases sharply and remains relatively low through young and middle age. After age 65, the level of spending per person rises sharply with age, reflecting the greater use of health services by older people. This paper examines patterns of use of health and social care services by people aged 50 and over, examining how utilisation varies with age, gender and ill health. A range of data sources are employed in the analysis, including the General Household Survey.
Email: maria.evandrou@soton.ac.uk
Health inequalities in older age: Material or psychosocial pathways?
Anne McMunn & James Nazroo
Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London
Health inequalities are well-documented among working age men. Despite current demographic trends towards an ageing population, little work has questioned whether inequalities in health persist post-retirement, whether the generative mechanisms for these inequalities are consistent with earlier ages, or, indeed, whether they change across the life course. This paper uses data from the first wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a panel study of 12,000 people aged 50 and older, to examine whether class-based inequalities in health persist post-retirement age and to determine whether health inequalities in older age operate predominantly through material or psychosocial pathways. We examine three different health outcome measures: a global measure of subjective health status (self-reported health), self-reported physical disability (Activities of Daily Living), and an objective measure of walking speed. Results show that large class inequalities exist post-retirement age for each of these health outcome measures. Class inequalities in health were mediated by both material factors (wealth and income) and psychosocial factors such as perceived social status (measured using 'the ladder') and socially meaningful roles such as employee, carer, volunteer or being a member of an organization. Those who remained employed post-state retirement age, who were caring for a grandchild, volunteering or were a member of an organization were consistently less likely to have poor health than their counterparts who did not adopt these roles.
Email: a.mcmunn@ucl.ac.uk
Compression of morbidity among the English population: evidence from English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)
Faiza Tabassum, Edlira Gjonjca, James Nazroo & Michael Marmot
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College, London.
Objectives: To investigate the compression of morbidity hypothesis on middle aged and elderly English population.
Design: Cross-sectional; Wave-1 of English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).
Participants: 11391 men and women of aged 50 years or above were included in the analyses.
Main outcome measures: Self-rated health, disability index which was constructed by taking into account ADL and IADL, and official life table data of England.
Results: 75% of men and women aged 50-54 years would survive to next 25 years according to official life tables. A linear trend by age in self-rated health and disability index was observed in both men and women (p for trend <0.0001). The rates of poor self-rated health were slightly higher in men after the age 55-59 than women. In older ages, the mean disability index was higher among men and women. The mean disability index from ELSA was combined with the official life tables to get the proportion of people alive without disability. If these data were for a cohort, 83% men and 82% of women would be free of disability in the age group 50-54 to these only 25% of men and 23% of women would be alive and free of disability 30 years later.
Conclusions: There is little evidence of compression of morbidity in the English population both in men and women. Thus, this study showed that an increased life expectancy has not been translated into a morbidity free or disability-free life.
Email: f.tabassum@ucl.ac.uk