How are older adults included in public policies?

As the population ages, governments face the challenge of designing public policies to address their concerns.  In countries like Canada, such policies may be well established. However, developing countries are worth noting because they often lack public policies which address the aging population.

In the context of the ACT project, it is important to understand the broad policy environment that addresses issues of importance to citizens in later life. By conducting a general study of policies, the team can begin to identify similarities and differences between more and less developed countries, as a foundation for exploring specific questions about the ways in which technologies can support and facilitate ageing.

Taking Canada as a starting point and extending our analysis to Peru, this pilot project will conduct research to answer the following research questions:

• Which public policies are these countries implementing towards the elderly?
• Which aspects of wellbeing do they address?
• Are social concerns included or just health-related ones?

We will begin to address these questions by looking at the Canada’s Aging Population and Public Policy series of documents (details provided below), and use these documents to help develop our template for comparative analysis across countries. We will ask:

• What amount of public resources is devoted to tend to the elderly in each country?
• What is the extent of social security in each country?
• Which state agency is responsible to address the elderly’s concerns? Are there multiple agencies, and if so, how are they coordinated?

The principal investigators  will construct a template to identify relevant variables (public policies) and compare designs (if any) and implementations in each country. Using the template, the research assistant will conduct web searches in order to identify documents and data to analyze. They will fill in the template and pinpoint important aspects of the welfare of the elderly population in search of public policies. The focus at this stage will be on national policies.