Monday, 8 May 2017

Stats Canada announces officially we have an aging society -- in years anyway

There are now more people in Canada older than 65 versus younger than 15

Baby Boomers are anyone born between 1946 - 1964. 

By Mark Schadenberg
Statistics – a series of graphs with their accompanying analysis – is a form of mathematics certainly, but when people are the number crunching subjects it becomes an exercise for Statistics Canada.
A top news item currently is the idea that for the first time ever, Canada has more inhabitants over the age of 65 than those younger than 15.
Demographic studies are carried out everywhere and most certainly by school boards as small rural schools are closed because there are not enough children to fill the classrooms. Meanwhile, as Woodstock grows in the south on streets such as Champlain, JK-8 Southside School receives a large addition in 2017.
Meanwhile, the over-65 sector is growing because people live longer.
Since statistic s is a comparison of numbers, the trend today is also driven by the idea that families are smaller.
A ‘baby boomer’ is someone born between 1946 and 1964, so today that social group is between the ages of 53 and 71.

Canada will likely be required to import people with skilled trades, including doctors, to meet demand in the future.
Is today’s work force going to be replaced as thousands upon thousands of baby boomers retire in the next 10 – 12 years?
As teenagers grow up they often leave small centres for larger areas. When you look at all the provinces, Nova Scotia has the worst ratio as there are 1.35% more citizens over the age of 65 versus under 15 in that particular Maritime province.
Read the Toronto Star story with the link below, but Ontario has the largest population by far versus other provinces at over 13,700,000, so this age gap is quite significant in math, but certainly also in services needed for an aging society. The Star notes that Canada does have an increase in population, but that’s mostly new adults through immigration.
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"As the Canadian population gets older, we've got more and more retired people," Mike Moffatt warns. (Assistant professor at Western University in London’s Ivy Business school. "That puts pressure on the health system and pension system because there's a smaller cohort of working age people to support that."
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When I enrolled in the SRES course (Senior Real Estate Specialist), I knew the material would be complex with statistics, but it also included ideas on empathy and coordinating the sale of a home with the younger family members.

The terminology seemed like it was from a sociology course, but the idea of ‘aging in place’ is a theory I most certainly believe in as someone who has resided in Woodstock for 60 years has all their connections here – doctors, their church, friends, seniors centre like Southgate and everything else familiar in their world. Someone should be able to live in Woodstock as they advance in stages of life from a family home to a condominium to an apartment.
See: Sally Creek (www.thevillagesofsallycreek.com
The CD Howe Institute realizes that Canadians live longer, so perhaps someone 65 today is equivalent to someone who was 55 a few decades ago. Therefore, their analysis concentrated on people over the age of 85.
CH Howe Institute: The census counted 770,780 Canadians aged 85 or older in 2016. This cohort grew almost four times as fast as the population as a whole between 2011 and 2016. There were 8,230 people at least 100 years old, a group that grew 41% compared with five years earlier.

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Health Minister Jane Philpott said the population growth among older Canadians is “something to be celebrated.
“Aging is a good thing, and the fact that we’re all living longer is very good news for Canadians, reflects the fact that we have an increasingly healthy population and it’s great that people are living longer,” she said. “It does, of course, raise concerns as it relates to the sustainability of our health-care system, but there is no reason for panic.”
Philpott said the government has policies to help, including investments in housing and home care. Ottawa is spending $6 billion over the next decade to provide the provinces with new funding for home care programs.
Much of the discussion among policy-makers following Wednesday’s census release was about when Canadians retire and what can or should be done to encourage people to work longer, in order to maintain a tax base and workforce able to pay for the growing needs in government programs for an aging population.
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If this is the year in which your family is selling a home, be sure to contact me as listings are very low at present.
The idea of an aging society is not new, but the reality has arrived this year indicating that we truly do have more Canadian residents older than 65 than younger than 15, but I would quickly add that 65 is not old. Statistics are numbers and do not necessarily represent anything more than the fact we have fewer people under 15.


LINKS:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170323/dq170323b-eng.htm?HPA=1&indid=4098-1&indgeo=0



Items on this blog site are compiled by:
Mark Schadenberg, Sales Representative
Senior Real Estate Specialist (SRES designation)
Royal LePage Triland Realty
Independently Owned & Operated, Brokerage
757 Dundas St, Woodstock
(519) 537-1553, cell or text
Email: mschadenberg@rogers.com
Twitter: markroyallepage
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