Cross Cutting Themes

The research themes are cross-cutting, interdisciplinary and analytical.  They include:

 a)    Ethnicity and Culture: as Canada becomes a more diverse society, issues of culture and ethnicity and aging will become increasingly important. Some of the issues that will be critical to investigate will include the attitudes and practices of young, second-generation immigrants vis-à-vis care of elders, child-rearing by grandparents, housing and settlement issues, inheritances and retirement, etc.;

b)     Person-Environment Relations: ‘aging in place’ is widely heralded as a best practice for older people, but the infiltration of this philosophy into areas such as urban planning, architecture, technologies for the home, municipal services and other domains is still underdeveloped. With the growing population of older people, there will be an imperative to adapt our environments (e.g., streets, housing, public buildings, etc.) to make them more amenable to seniors’ independence;

c)     Social Economic Vulnerability: although Canada is internationally recognized as being quite successful in promoting economic security for its seniors, there are still many individuals who fall through the cracks of the system. Moreover, the next generation of seniors will be the first to have lived through the post-industrial era and a protracted period of income stagnation, reduced union membership and pension eligibility, and reduced fertility and smaller household size, all of which are serious threats to the income security of our future seniors;

d)     Life Course and Population Studies: it is now increasingly recognized that many of the challenges older people face in terms of health and functional capacity are significantly shaped by conditions earlier in life, even pre-natally. Greater cognitive stimulation in the first two decades of life, for example, has been shown to prolong the age of onset of senility. If the age of senility could be prolonged by a small average amount over large populations, this would result in a significant compression of morbidity and reduced care burden for society. Additionally, the successful navigation of major life milestones (such as school leaving, independent household formation and work leaving) has a significant impact on the well-being of older persons. Such a perspective poses major policy challenges and opportunities, as well as a host of research questions about how to optimize health, well-being and competence over the life course;

e)     Systems, Services and Policies: a variety of changes, including the expected growth in the population of older people in Canada, increasing diversity and the increased economic vulnerability of the next generation of seniors has major implications for policy and our systems for providing services. There are a wide variety of research questions that arise from these changes.

These themes will be integral to the promotion of interdisciplinary exchange, theoretical innovation and policy engagement in our core research programs.