Edinburgh researchers claim ageing population fears to be based on a false economy

Caring for an ageing populace has been central to the Government’s Health and Social Care reforms, voted for last year and set to come into effect in 2015.

Experts at Edinburgh University, however, now claim to have research that exposes the negative effects of an ageing populace as grossly overestimated.

Professor John MacInnes and senior research fellow Jeroen Spijker believe policy makers to be misinformed on the numbers of ageing people likely to be in need of healthcare, even to the extent that the number of those dependent on care has in fact fallen.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the pair discuss the effects that increasing numbers of older people have on the public purse, including through health requirements, social insurance and welfare, but call for a more accurate measure than the ‘old age dependency ratio’ that demographic experts have previously relied on.

The old age dependency ratio divides the number of people who have reached state pension age by the number of people of working age, but the pair claim this to be a ‘poor measure’.

They explain, ‘[The measure] counts neither the number of dependent older people nor the number who sustain them. It merely takes a cut-off point (the state pension age) and assigns adults to the two sides of the ratio accordingly. This might be a useful rule of thumb if the relative size of these two age groups tracked the volume of old age dependency, but it does not. We propose an alternative measure that gives a more accurate and very different picture and consider the implications of our results for health policy.’

Instead, they advise that age is measured against life expectancy and calculate the dependent older population based on those with a remaining life expectancy of 15 years. In doing so the research produces quite different conclusions, even suggesting that extra pressure on health and social care systems is an ‘assumption’.

A number of factors can be used to show the economic costs of old age dependency have been over-exaggerated, including that there are an increasing number of adults in work now when calculated against each older person and child. The study also points out that previous assessments have overlooked the rate of technological advances in the healthcare sector and developing professional approaches to how care is carried out.

The study will astonish many care organisations who see the ageing population as one of the UK’s key challenges over the coming decades, particularly in relation to the rising number of people diagnosed with dementia. The Alzheimer’s Society estimates there are currently 800,000 people with the condition, set to rise to a million by 2021.