AS THE ELDERLY MAJORITY VOTES ITSELF LARGESSE:

The ageing face of the future (GILLIAN BOWDITCH, 10/12/04, The Scotsman)

BELLE Macmillan is a member of a select group. Born in the reign of Edward VII, her life has encompassed two world wars and 17 prime ministers. In 1909, the year she was born, the North Pole was conquered and Louis Blériot became the first man to fly across the Channel. But the 95-year-old is also the face of the future. A former nurse, widowed and childless, she moved from sheltered housing into residential care in Edinburgh in spring 2002. "I wasn’t very well and I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get out," she says. "I’d been in my previous home for 23 years so I thought I had done quite well."

By 2101, the number of Scots aged 90-plus will pass 350,000 and could be as high as 435,000 - more than ten times current levels - according to work carried out by Phillip Rees, of Leeds University.

Falling birth rates mean many nonagenarians of the future will, like Belle, have no family. Traditional models of care may become obsolete.

If a 22nd-century Scotland populated by Methuselahs seems unlikely, consider how surprising today’s average life expectancy would have seemed to our great-great-grandmothers. The 20th century added 25 years to the average lifespan and that figure continues to rise. UK wide, the over-80s are the fastest growing segment of the population; their numbers are expected to treble within 25 years. Estimates of the outer limits of mortality, as currently calculated, stop at around 122.

But in affluent countries, the number of centenarians has doubled every decade since 1960. In Japan, the number of centenarians has risen from 154 in September 1963, when records began, to 23,038 this year. The 2001 census showed Scotland had around 500 centenarians and 29,114 people aged over 90.

"There is nothing we can do about ageing," says Prof Rees. "It is happening. Whatever population projection scenario you adopt, you still have ageing [and] we have to adapt."

Jess Barrow, head of policy and public affairs at Age Concern Scotland, praises the Executive for three policy initiatives for older people - "free personal care, free central heating and free transport - all of which are tremendously important; these policies are making a real difference to people’s lives. But the government’s approach to the ageing population and declining population has been to focus on immigration as the solution.

Free care for our old: Will new policy turn into costly mistake? (The Scotsman, 10/12/04)

FREE personal care for the elderly has been hailed by the Executive as one of the success stories of devolution but the controversy surrounding its long-term cost is growing like Jack’s beanstalk.

More than 48,000 Scots now receive free personal care. This year has seen a 74 per cent increase in those receiving care in their own homes. Last month, Robert Black, Scotland’s auditor general, said almost the entire £126m annual budget for free personal care had been spent in the first nine months of this year. The Executive has pledged to honour the policy, introduced by Henry McLeish in 2001, but experts increasingly believe it will not prove financially viable in the long term.

There's a sales pitch for you: "Come to Scotland because we need to tax someone to fund our comfortable twilight years."

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 12, 2004 8:21 AM