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  • Introduction: Aging Societies—The Dynamics of Demographic Change in Canada
  • Cornelius Remie (bio) and Gustave Goldmann (bio)

Seniors constitute the fastest growing population group in many countries. In Canada, their proportion in the overall population has gone from one in 20 in 1921 to one in eight in 2001. The number of seniors is expected to reach 6.7 million in 2021 and 9.2 million in 2041 (nearly one in four Canadians). Aging, along with falling fertility rates and increased life expectancy, is an issue that affects all generations, and it will have far reaching consequences for the social, cultural, economic, and political make-up of the country. The articles presented in this issue were selected on the basis of their ability to highlight important aspects of this phenomenon—aging societies—that has everything to do with the continuation of our way of life and the public institutions that shape our societies, particularly in Canada.

In the first article, based on an impressive amount of quantitative data, Le Bourdais and her collaborators (Girard, Swiss, and Lapierre-Adamcyk) discuss the consequences of Canada’s population dynamics in great detail. Le Bourdais addresses the plunging fertility rates, changing family composition, the growing instability of marriage unions, and its impact on family life for present and future aged persons.

Syrett’s article explores the legality of age-related allocative decision making in health care in relation to international and domestic standards of human rights law. Drawing upon source materials, scenarios, and case law from the UK and New Zealand in addition to Canada, it focuses in particular upon the use of the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) metric—the gold standard for evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of health technologies—by institutions and processes such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (UK) and the Common Drug Review (Canada), which play key roles in establishing the scope of health system coverage. The article argues that the QALY offends principles of ethics and human rights because of its tendency toward ageism. Decision making that rests upon the application of such a measure can accordingly be regarded as lacking in legitimacy, both morally and legally.

Other articles engage with aspects of the caring society. Palley’s contribution describes how health and related long-term care policies are often “embedded” in situations that are unique to specific countries. The specific contexts of such policies include demographic trends, socio-cultural factors, government organization, and political circumstances. In this article, Palley utilizes a comparative framework examining international trends in long-term [End Page 7] care policy with emphasis on how these trends are reflected in Canada’s federal and provincial policies.

McDaniel and Gazso argue in their article that it is well known that policies and welfare regimes differentially affect the aging process, health trajectories over the life course, and indeed life expectancy. Growing income inequalities are also understood to have health and well-being implications. The focus in this article is on the effects of growing income inequalities on the health and well-being of those in mid-life as they age in two neighbouring countries, Canada and the United States. McDaniel and Gazso rely on a comparative multi-method approach informed by a life course perspective. Placing the trajectories of synthetic cohorts in the two countries in the contexts of contrasting welfare policy regimes, they examine the relative effects of growing income inequalities on well-being as people move into their later years. By juxtaposing the effects of long-term policies and growing income inequalities with the life course process of aging, they are able to hypothesize what the health and well-being prospects may be for those who will soon be in their older years in the two countries.

Marier’s article presents a comparative analysis of four Canadian provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan) with different administrative responses to population aging. The way in which population aging is tackled administratively matters greatly because it drives the types of policy responses being proposed and implemented.

Finally, Dansereau looks at the phenomenon of aging through three Canadian novels: Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot, Et dansent les hirondelles by Marguerite Primeau...

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