Aging and Retirement

Aging and retirement manifest themselves in many individual and household cases as instances of social problems not only to policy-makers and the political class, but also and more tellingly to the aging or the retirees themselves – as well as to their extended families and communities. These social problems transcend the usual mismatch between retirement benefits, if there be any such benefits, and the year-on-year, inflation-propelled rise in the cost of living and decline in the quality of senior life. They include: increasing physical immobility and loneliness, chronic pain, growing susceptibility to ill-health and medical emergencies, creeping blindness and loss of hearing, diminishing access to the basic needs (food/water, shelter, clothing and proper hygiene) that might have been previously available, declining capacity to maintain the requisite levels of personal care, and personal insecurity and fearfulness in local environments of rising crime levels. The Social Sciences team will establish methods and procedures for the systematic baselining, as well as continuing and long-term documentation and analysis of these problems and their related parameters. There will be a need, in all this, to partner with policy makers, employers, trade unions (COTU), NSSF and NHIF.