Rise in older people living in villages predicted
“A quarter of people living in England’s countryside will be over 65 by 2020, a campaign group has said. The National Housing Federation said figures estimate a 40% rise in older residents over the next 10 years. The federation, which represents England’s housing associations, said the number of over 65s living in rural England is expected to be 3.23m by 2020, compared with 2.32m in 2008″.
For me, there are two issues here. The first one is the one of the social contract which makes Society what it is; one of the problems the increasing number of rural over-65s increases is that of care for them. If there is too high a proportion of old people to young people (for want of more appropriate – but more cumbersome – language), then it makes it so much more difficult, and costly, to provide suitable care; at its most basic level, fewer younger people in the village means fewer younger people able to simply pop to the shop on behalf of their elderly neighbour who doesn’t find it so easy to get out of the house for themselves any more.
This is of course sad, but the thing is – and here I’m conscious of sounding quite uncomfortably tory – the social contract of society is a two way contract; if Society contracts to look after the elderly who’ve paid in to the National Insurance system for 50 years etc, do not ‘the elderly’ have a correspondent responsibility to facilitate being looked after? Is it really so unreasonable to suggest that somebody who has a high level of caring needs moves from their four bedroom house on the edge of a village in the middle of nowhere (with three buses a week) to somewhere a bit more, y’know, central?
And then there’s the second issue – the dirty little secret of the countryside.
“The rising cost of housing in rural areas is driving out younger people as houses are, on average, £40,000 more expensive than those in towns and cities – even though wages are far lower, it said. At the same time, better-off older people are retiring to their dream country home”.
We’ve been hearing for years how awful it is that young people who are born and grow up in rural villages end up leaving when they come to need a home of their own, because they can’t afford to now buy a house there due to rising countryside property values; this is made out to be the fault of rich urban dwellers buying second homes, and Government Intervention Is Called For.
What always seems to be overlooked is that if rich people are buying all the houses in the countryside, who is selling them to them? Is it not the people already living in the countryside? Fair enough, you sell your house, you try to get the best price for it – but ‘the countryside’ can’t collectively sell itself out to the highest bidder & at the same time collectively complain about pricing its own children out of the market to remain there. Similarly, ‘the countryside’ cannot enjoy the peace and quiet that disconnexion from the urban rat race provides, and at the same time complain about the inconvenience which comes from that disconnexion.
January 31st, 2010 at 23:24 (Quote)
There is a flip side to this argument. The impact of a declining number of older people in urban centres. Or to be more precise the declining number of the “right” sort of older people in urban centres.
The increase in the number of rural older people is largely driven by the flight of wealthy and comparatively healthy people from the Cities. This is driven by the perception of a lack of safety and a belief that there is an ideal society within villages that people can retire to.
This then causes a disproportionate number of less wealthy and much less healthy people left in the Cities. This is one of the fundamental causes of low life expectancy in cities.
The experience of many people who retire to villages is often very different to what they expect. The lack of coherent family and community structures often leave people marooned once they become dependant on care.
Equally as we see less older people in Cities there is a knock on effect from a lack of community cohesion.
The consequence of the flight of wealth has a major impact on the ability of a city to provide care and support for older people. A larger number of people, with a larger ability to meet the cost of their own care creates a economy of scale in provision. Without a wealthy subset of older people a city can be swamped by the cost of social care.
We need to make urban environments a much more attractive place to retire to before we end up killing both the city and the countryside.
That’s what I think.
February 1st, 2010 at 00:30 (Quote)
During their working lives, those now of retirement age (who, don’t forget, now include those who screamed at the Fab Four) would already have had access to the benefits of the welfare-state.
The NI system wasn’t predicated on all contributors eventually redeeming the full amount due to an individual – it wouldn’t be able to afford it. If it’s reasonable for you, Simon, to ask if oldies should move into central locations, so should it be to ask if NHS treatment or benefits or whatever should be freely available to recent arrivals to this country; and have not paid NI contributions or taxes.
The post-1945 welfare state emerged out of a sense of common experience, and in a largely ethnically homogeneous population. Scandinavian systems, often held up as perfect examples, are under strain as these socially conservative populations deal with the experience of large-scale immigration.
February 2nd, 2010 at 20:28 (Quote)
It should occurred to them before moving there that one day it would be too much for them; they need to sell the overpriced quaint cottages which they bought from a rapacious peasant thus doing one of the local born young people out of a home and forcing them to move to civilisation, and move back to civilisation themselves. Then the true countrydwellers can get on with tinkering with their tractors and chewing their straws.