Families, households and health in ageing populations: Projections and implications

This project focusses on the family and household situation of older people and will contribute to understanding how intergenerational relationships operate in the face of demographic change and what are the implications for housing and care needs of changes in the family and household circumstances of older people. We will undertake analyses of rich longitudinal data, including later-life social and biological data, and retrospective life course information, to better understand the complex interlinkages between families, household, health and health inequality in older age groups. We will also investigate how the relationship between biological measures of health and difficulties in undertaking essential everyday activities may be influenced by provision of various types of help, including support from family, suitable housing and financial help. This will help with planning services that enable older people to carry on with every day activities even if they have various health problems. Building on this, we will provide forecasts of the older populations of the UK and China by family, household, health and disability status using innovatory household projection models. Such forecasts are essential for planning to meet the health, housing and care needs of ageing populations as, together with disability status, living arrangements and family support are major determinants of the use and costs of state provided or market sourced long-term care. Disabled elders living alone have much higher needs for paid services in the home than those who live with children and/or a spouse and older persons' social contacts and receipt of family help are associated with both number and gender of children. This China-UK biosocial collaborative project will thus contribute to building the knowledge base needed to address the health and social challenges facing ageing societies.

Both the methodological and substantive results from this project will be of potential benefit and interest to a range of international, national and regional organisations and the research team will also benefit from insights from these potential users so have a strong commitment to full engagement. We will build on existing connections to engage with organisations and professionals with responsibilities for population and household projections and their policy implications; planners and providers of housing and care for older people. We will organise three specific events for different audiences in the UK, A Festival of Social Science event; a British Academy event and a more specialist day workshop for housing and care planners and providers. We will produce policy briefs and accessible articles for non-specialist audiences. We will also provide training courses and events linked to conferences attracting both researchers and policy makers. We will disseminate findings through newsletters, blogs and social media posts as well conference presentations and journal articles. We will participate fully in the activities of the proposed UK-China network of collaborators. Both the UK and the Chinese teams include specialist engagement and dissemination staff.