Wednesday, April 15, 2015
12-1pm
1376 LeMarchant Street
With Jacqueline Gahagan, Liesl Gambold and Grey Jones
School of Health and Human Performance and Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
The focus of this project is to interrogate the ways in which retirement-related migration patterns among diverse older populations are negotiated and informed by health policies that can serve to inform access to health-related services. Health polices can, for example, impact on access to health services and resources for diverse populations of older adults, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirit (LGBTQ2) populations. This is, we argue, an important and yet largely overlooked topic in advancing our understanding of health equity, health policy and access to health services in the context of Canada and select EU contexts.
The issue of equity and access to health services is particularly salient as the sheer numbers of ‘baby boomers’ reaching retirement age and seeking to relocate or spend considerable time outside their country of origin continues to grow, and in some instances, beyond local capacity to address the wide range of health and social needs of diverse older populations. With reference to the European Union (EU) we see a significant aging trend which will lead to an increase in the population aged 65 and older from 87.5 million in 2010 to 152.6 million in 2060. In addition, the number of older people aged 80 and above, will increase even more, with a tripling from 23.7 million in 2010 to 62.4 million in 2060.
Thus, as the baby boomers enter retirement, social, economic, political and cultural actors are rushing to understand how this unprecedented number of retirees will have an impact at local and national levels. This study will take a multidisciplinary and international approach to highlight how healthy aging might be impacted by policy, migration, sexuality and culture.