Aging In Canada
- Building A Health Care System For The 21st Century The Canadian ... - that the system is no longer financially viable and requires a massive financial injection, which...
- Mutlti-Million Dollar Deficite - care system. Problems with the health care in Canada is an on going issue debated from all...
- The Elderly And Religion - Children play a major role in caring for the aging. In particular daughters are expected...
- 2004 Presidental Election Prediction - Senator Kerry's proposal to bring in cheaper medications from Canada will appeal to...
- Nursing Shortage - getting health care because of financial troubles or a lack of insurance with the economy up, so...
Submitted by renees on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Religion
- Words: 1177
- Pages: 5
- Views: 28
- Popularity Rank: 2195
Aging In Canada
Aging and the Functionalist Perspective
The term aging makes people think of greying hair and wrinkles, but what we fail to see is that not only do people age, but societies mature too. Today, more than one-tenth of the population is made up of senior citizens. This makes Canada's residents one of the oldest in the world. It is likely the Canadian society will age even more in the next 50 years. In 1981 the average age in Canada was 30, and in 2001, it increased to 38 (Novak, 1997). The swell is in part the result of the baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) moving into middle age, and also partially the result of people living longer due to advancements in our lifestyles.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy has steadily improved as industrialized nations developed better technology that helped create better water and sewage systems, improved nutrition, and made new discoveries in medical science (Henslin, Glenday, Duffy, Pupo, 2001). Economic development in these industrial nations, due to creating many new high paying jobs, contributed to lowering the death rate and also contributed in lowering the birth rate. Better technologies have allowed for better methods of birth control. This has affected the size of the family because today, in industrialized nations, many women work full time or families cannot financially support many children. Children cannot contribute to the family financially and need to be supported, so they are often seen as a liability. There are many trends in aging in Canada based on gender, social class, and ethnicity, and as a result of the changing population trends, research on aging has grown and changed dramatically over the past few decades.
Sociologists and social gerontologists came up with a number of explanations of the social effects of aging. Early theories were based on a micro-level analysis of how individuals adjusted to changing social roles. Later...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!
