Income Support for the Elderly

Concern about income support for the elderly has been a theme in social policy for decades. In recent years, frustration with stalled coverage of social security schemes in many countries has resulted in interest in the provision of noncontributory assistance to the elderly. 

Equitable social assistance programs include ethnic groups in proportion to their share of the poor. If an ethnic group is tbund to be underrepresented, then the cause of underrepresentation should be found and corrected. Following are some questions that can be helpful in such a diagnosis. 

FOR PROTECTION AND PROMOTION THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EFFECTIVE SAFETY NETS 

The numbers of elderly are increasingly markedly. The United Nations estimates that worldwide, 606 million people are over the age of 60, or roughly 10 percent of the world s population, and that this number is likely to more than double to 1.6 billion by 2050, when the elderly will account for 19 percent of the world s population. Of this elderly population, 62 percent currently live in developing countries, but by 2050, 80 percent of the world s elderly will live in developing countries. Among the elderly, the fraction over the age of 80 is currently about 12 percent and is expected to increase to about 19 percent by 2050 (UN 2002). 

At the same time that the number of elderly is increasing, the prospects for their independent support in old age do not seem to be improving greatly or are not doing so uniformly and reliably. Several means of support are possible, with each having different factors that affect their sufficiency as shown below  

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In finding a policy response to the issue of income support for the elderly, policy makers must consider both the needs of the elderly relative to those of other groups and the choice of instruments. While thinking creatively now about how to handle the increasing numbers of elderly in the future is appropriate, policy makers should bear in mind that... 

Despite overwhelming data supporting the efficacy of ECT treatment for major depression, marked variation in the extent and pattern of its usage continues. Use of ECT declined in the 1970s but then appeared to stabilize or increase in the 1980s (J. W. Thompson et al. 1994]. ECT is used far more commonly in private hospitals than in public institutions and is more commonly administered to older patients and to women. Its more common administration to women may be the result of higher rates of depression in women (J. W. Thompson et al. 1994]. Olfson et al. [1998] similarly reported that ECT is used more often in white persons, those with higher incomes, and the elderly. 

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