ASSISTED LIVING IN OUR OLD AGE - WHAT IS IT LIKE?

Straits Times 14 July

This article appeared in The Straits Times today. It is well worth a read. As ST allows online access only to subscribers, I am posting the link to the Washington Post which published the article on 10 July.

The article is written by Martin Bayne. Stricken by Parkinson's, he had to move into an assisted living home when he was 53. He writes about what it is like to spend his days among people so much older than he is, and to see them dying off one by one.

The article has received more than 500 comments. Do read some of them.

"People my age — I’m now 62 — might go to an assisted living facility every now and then to visit an older family member. But few people in my age group actually live in an assisted living facility. I do.

Illustration from the Washington Post

Eight years ago, in a wheelchair and after nearly a decade of living at home with young-onset Parkinson’s disease, I decided to move into an assisted living facility. I knew what my decision meant. I’d be moving into a place where the average resident was 32 years older than I was, and the average levels of disability, depression, dementia and death were dramatically higher than in the general population.

What I hadn’t calculated was what it’s like to watch a friend — someone you’ve eaten breakfast with every morning for several years — waste away and die. And just as you’re recovering from that friend’s death, another friend begins to waste away. I can say with certainty that the prospect of watching dozens (at my young age, perhaps hundreds) of my friends and neighbors in assisted living die is a sadness beyond words."

(To read the full article, click on the title below.)

A man depicts the often grim atmosphere in assisted living facilities 

HOW POPULATION CONTROL IMPACTS ELDER CARE

What happens when laws are passed to slow down population growth in a country? What are the repercussions when people are forced to keep their families small?

China introduced the one-child policy in 1979 in an attempt to control its burgeoning population. The policy has led to forced sterilization and even late-term abortions. A recent case involved Feng Jianmei who was forced to abort when she was seven months pregnant because she and her husband could not pay the fine for breaking the country's strict birth control policy.

Singapore also implemented population control measures in the early 1980s with its stop-at-two policy. Hefty fines were imposed on couples having more than two children. Other disincentives included no paid maternity leave for third and subsequent children, progressively higher delivery charges for each additional birth, and income tax relief only for the first two children.

Based on CIA World Factbook

Now more than three decades later, these countries are facing the dire consequences of their demographic engineering. In Singapore, the government is grappling with problems brought on by years of declining birth rate. It has relaxed its stop-at-two policy, and is offering a host of attractive incentives for large families. So far attempts to raise the birth rate have met with limited success. The birthrate continues to remain low at just over 1 per cent.

What implications does this demographic tweaking have on parents affected by such policies?

In China, for example, who will take care of the elderly parents if their one child dies before them or is unable or unwilling to support them in their old age?

According to the Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, China already had 14 percent fewer people in their 20s compared with a decade ago. In the next 20 years, their numbers will dwindle an additional 17 percent, while the share of China’s population that is 65 and older is projected to double to 16 percent. By 2050, nearly one in four Chinese will be elderly, according to United Nations projections.

In Singapore as in China, a low birth rate translates into a smaller labour force, which in turn, affects national economic growth. In fact, the labour force has started to shrink. The country has been importing foreign labour on an unprecedented scale, much to the consternation of the local citizens. One only has to take a ride on the MRT to notice that foreigners now outnumber Singaporeans, at least on the trains.

In both countries, the 1-2 child culture is so ingrained in the Chinese populace that it is an uphill struggle for the government to encourage couples to have more children.

China's One Child Policy