Ishares Age Pop Discussion Threads

[grupo] 06/5/2022 07:39

By:
Florence VILLEMINOT


Compared to other industrialised countries, French people tend to live relatively long lives.

Currently the oldest person alive in the world is a French woman: a Catholic nun living in the South of France.

So what’s the secret?

Do long lunch breaks and red wine have something to do with it?

What’s the economic impact of an aging population and what can the country do to improve care for a growing number of dependent people?

[adrian j boris] 09/3/2022 12:14

Alphorn
9 Mar '22 - 11:52 - 15045 of 15045
0 1 0
Previously posted on Altos - they are not alone. LA JOLLA — Age may be just a number, but it’s a number that often carries unwanted side effects, from brittle bones and weaker muscles to increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute, in collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche group, have shown that they can safely and effectively reverse the aging process in middle-aged and elderly mice by partially resetting their cells to more youthful states.

Interesting research.

[sarkasm] 25/2/2020 10:20

U.K. Life Expectancy Stalls For First Time Since the 1800s

Fergal O'Brien, Bloomberg News








HARTLEPOOL, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 04: Local youths fish in the sea near the docks in the Headland area of Hartlepool,on September 4, 2017 in Hartlepool, England. Hartlepool in the North East of England is one of the many coastal towns lagging behind inland areas with some of the worst levels of economic and social deprivation in the country. The Social Market Foundation (SMF) found that 85% of Great Britain's 98 coastal local authorities had pay levels below the national average for 2016. The government has announced that it will give 40 million GBP to encourage tourism and boost employment in the areas. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

HARTLEPOOL, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 04: Local youths fish in the sea near the docks in the Headland area of Hartlepool,on September 4, 2017 in Hartlepool, England. Hartlepool in the North East of England is one of the many coastal towns lagging behind inland areas with some of the worst levels of economic and social deprivation in the country. The Social Market Foundation (SMF) found that 85% of Great Britain's 98 coastal local authorities had pay levels below the national average for 2016. The government has announced that it will give 40 million GBP to encourage tourism and boost employment in the areas. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) , Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Europe

(Bloomberg) --

Gains in U.K. life expectancy have stalled for the first time in more than a century, with part of the blame laid on the country’s post-crisis decade of austerity, according to a new report.

The review published by the U.K.’s Institute of Health Equity said stagnant life expectancy rates haven’t happened since at least 1900. “If health has stopped improving it is a sign that society has stopped improving,” it said.

The report will be latched onto by critics of austerity and the Conservative government. They have long blamed spending cuts for a rise in poverty and growth in the use of food banks in the U.K.

Author Michael Marmot described the results of the study as “shocking,R21; and said “austerity has taken its toll.”

The review also highlights the country’s stark north-south divide, with northeast England found to have the lowest life expectancy. Such regions are expected to be a focus of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s budget next month. He’s said he wants to “level up” poorer regions of the country and aims to target spending in those areas.

The government’s new approach to spending provides some grounds for optimism, the report noted. This “could, if allocated in the right way, help reduce health inequalities and turn around some of the trajectories and poor outcomes experienced over the last ten years,” it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fergal O'Brien in Zurich at [e-mail]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at [e-mail], Andrew Atkinson, Stuart Biggs

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

[ariane] 29/8/2019 11:21

Swiss women have the longest life expectancy
Emily Perryman
Emily Perryman 29th August 2019

Swiss women have the longest life expectancy, according to a review of 15 major countries.

Females living in Switzerland can expect to live for 79.03 years, compared with 76.43 years in the UK, which came sixth in the rankings.

The research from the University of Pennsylvania shows Australia tops the charts for male life expectancy at 74.1 years, compared with 72.33 years for UK males.

Australian women ranked second at 78.9 years, with Norway coming in at third place at an average of 78.61 years.

Italy came bottom for women, with females living until they are 72.14 on average.

Men in the European countries of Sweden and Switzerland topped the chart in second (74.02 years) and third place (73.7 years).

Males from Portugal only have a life expectancy of 64.77 years, placing them last out of the 15 countries, the Daily Mail reports.

Dr Collin Payne, Australian National University, who co-led the study, said the male results have a lot to do with long-term stability and the fact Australia has had a high standard of living for a really long time.

The estimated life expectancies in the study are lower than official figures for the UK. Males in the UK live an average of 79.2 years while it is 82.9 years for females, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is because the researchers used a method called cohort life expectancy, which compares people who were born in the same year and have lived through similar conditions.

[waldron] 21/5/2019 06:50

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ENGIE Completes £15m Property Developments in Wrexham
Construction & Property North Wales
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Mark Powney , 21st May 2019

Energy and regeneration specialist ENGIE has completed construction on an extra care housing facility and 50 affordable apartments, on behalf of ClwydAlyn Housing Association.

The first of the new sites is Maes y Dderwen on Grosvenor Road, a new £10m extra care housing scheme for older people in Wrexham. The scheme recently received the award for ‘Best Social or Affordable New Housing Development’ at the LABC North Wales Building Excellence Awards 2019, which recognises excellence in the delivery of outstanding construction and workmanship.

Maes y Dderwen was built by ENGIE, on behalf of a partnership between Wrexham County Borough, the Welsh Government and ClwydAlyn. The site consists of 60 one- and two-bedroom high-quality apartments for rent and has been designed to meet varying levels of need for care and support, whilst ensuring residents can live independently in their own homes.

The site was officially handed over to ClwydAlyn at the end of 2018, but a phased move-in period was put in place to minimize disruption for new tenants, who each have their own self-contained apartment as well as access to a wide range of communal facilities and, for those tenants who require it, access to 24-hour support.

Andrew McIntosh, Regional Managing Director at ENGIE said:

“This exciting new and award-winning extra care scheme has become an integral part of the innovative range of housing options available for older people in Wales and we were delighted to work with partners to bring this scheme to fruition.

“The property provides high quality accommodation for tenants, whilst also offering dedicated care and support when needed, ensuring the older generation are able to enjoy life to the fullest whilst continuing to live independently.”;

The second scheme built by ENGIE for ClwydAlyn is a £5m development of 50, one and two bedroom, affordable apartments, known as Rivulet Road and completed in March 2019.

Andrew added:

“Rivulet was another great construction project to lead. The apartments have a modern interior and offer quality housing for the local community. We hope these apartments become happy homes for people and families from across the area.”

[adrian j boris] 13/5/2019 12:09

THE GUARDIAN


Funeral provider Dignity warns fall in number of deaths will hit profits

Deaths this year likely to be 3% lower than last year, says one of UK’s biggest undertakers

Julia Kollewe

Mon 13 May 2019 08.59 BST
Last modified on Mon 13 May 2019 09.00 BST



A significant fall in the number of people dying in the UK has forced one of Britain’s biggest undertakers to issue a profit warning.

Dignity, the UK’s only publicly listed funeral services company, said the number of deaths in the 13 weeks to 29 March fell by 12% to 159,000. This led to a 15% drop in revenues to £81.1m and dragged underlying operating profit down by 42% to £21.7m.

The company said historical data over the past 20 years indicates that deaths in the full year are likely to be 3% lower than 2018, at 580,000. This means that its full-year operating profits would come in £3m to £4m lower than expected. It had forecast £307m of revenues and profits of £68m.

The news sent the company’s shares down 6% in early trading.

An estimated 599,000 people died in Britain last year, a small increase on 2017. The Office for National Statistics expects the number of deaths to go up in the long term, and reach 700,000 a year by 2040.

Dignity carried out 19,200 funerals in the quarter, down from 21,400 a year earlier. But its market share rose to 12.0% from 11.7% after the firm improved its services and cut its prices last year, in response to a price war started by the Co-op. Dignity slashed the price of its cheapest funeral by 25% and has been trialling unbundled services for bespoke funerals.

Dignity made £190 less from each funeral on average than in 2018, and expects average income for the year to be about £2,940 per ceremony.
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Dignity also performed 18,000 cremations, down from 19,100, with a market share of 11.3%. It pointed to the growing popularity of direct cremations – a no-frills option with no ceremony and no mourners present, where the body is collected, cremated and the ashes are returned afterwards.

David Bowie, who died from liver cancer in 2016, chose this option and a growing number of Britons are opting for this kind of send-off for their loved ones. Many families struggle to afford a funeral, which typically costs between £3,000 and £5,000.

The Competition and Markets Authority has found that the cost of organising a funeral rose by 6% each year – twice the inflation rate – for the past 14 years, and launched an 18-month investigation into the funeral market in March. It noted that profit margins at the biggest firms were high by international standards, with Dignity’s in particular “well above” those in other countries.

[ariane] 16/4/2019 14:25

Care home maintenance deal worth £80m to Engie
6 hours Engie has won a 10-year contract worth £80m to provide building maintenance work to retirement care specialist Anchor Hanover.

Anchor Hanover is England’s largest provider of care and housing for older people – with 54,000 homes across 1,700 locations. Engie has been as a strategic delivery partner for the north and south regions – two separate regional contracts worth £40m each.

Engie will work with Anchor Hanover to develop and deliver annual programmes of work to prolong and enhance the condition of its housing stock.

Scope of work includes replacing kitchens, bathrooms, doors, windows and electrical heating as well as repairs to roofs and pavements. All work will be completed with residents in occupation.

[ariane] 27/9/2018 07:29

Adam Smith Institute
Be wary of solutions to perceived falling lifespans
September 27, 2018
Be wary of solutions to perceived falling lifespans
Tim Worstall

We’ve been known - ad tedium perhaps - to make the point that we must understand the details of a number, a statistic, to quite grasp what it is that we are being told. If we forget the original composition it’s all too easy to fall into error while trying to craft solutions.

An obvious example is the American poverty line - this is calculated before the effect of near all that is done to reduce poverty. It is not possible therefore to argue that we should be doing more of what is done in order to reduce the number below the poverty line. Simply because we’re not taking account of those things that are done.

A similar problem will face us with these new numbers from ONS showing life expectancy falling. Or growth in it slowing.

Life expectancy growth has stalled to a record low, but there are more male centenarians than ever before.

Figures published by the ONS show that life expectancy has stopped growing in the UK, and is even going backwards in some areas.

Between 2015 and 2017 life expectancy at birth remained at 79.2 years for men and 82.9 years for women, the first time that there was no improvement at all from the previous data.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, life expectancy fell, with the largest drop, of 0.11 years, seen for men in Wales.

If we were, and Heaven Forfend, to leap to making a political point we might mutter something about the less marketised NHS Wales and NHS Scotland being less effective at preventing death than the more marketised NHS England. And we’d be right, too, but political sneering isn’t quite our style.

The important point here, as we’ve also pointed out before, is that no one at all is even trying to measure how long people born today are going to live. They’re measuring the age of death of people born 70, 80 and 90 years ago. Which means that there’s an importance to the composition of these numbers.

We will, undoubtedly, be told again that it’s inequality, or selective schooling, or relative child poverty, or something to do with the kiddiewinks at least, which is causing this slow down in life expectancy. The usual claim is that those things cause all ills after all. The problem with this allocation of blame being that whatever the effects of these things on current death rates they’re the relative child poverty and so on of 65, 75 and 85 years ago, not those of today.

Whatever we do about children today, whatever is happening to children today, is going to influence deaths in near a century’s time. Well, assuming no Herod solution being offered.

So, when solutions are offered to deal with these changes in life expectancy remember that we can reject out of hand any of them at all which refer to current conditions for younger people. Given the manner in which the statistic is compiled they have no relevance at all to the point at hand. The influence is of past conditions upon those ageing now.

[florenceorbis] 25/9/2018 14:05

Tuesday 25 September 2018 by Lucas Wilde
Brits clearly looking forward to Brexit as rising life expectancy grinds to a halt

Life expectancy no longer rising

Life expectancy in Britain has stopped rising for the first time in recorded history and it’s definitely Brexit’s fault, according to reports this morning.

With Britain set to definitely become some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland after Britain leaves the EU, British citizens are chucking as much cake, alcohol and tobacco down their necks as they possibly can.

“Well, we might as well enjoy it now,” said Simon Williams, finishing off his 17th cigarette of the morning before cracking open another banoffee pie.

“None of this stuff is going to be around much longer, and if that’s the case then I don’t want to be either.

“I don’t look forward to the prospect of trying to pry open a can of chlorinated chicken with my bare hands because I’ve bartered my last tin opener for some out of date medicine.

“So I intend to take back control, by eating, drinking and smoking my way into as early a grave as possible, thank you very much.”

Scientist, Hayley Rice, said “It’s the first time since we’ve been looking at these figures that we’ve seen life expectancy ceasing to rise.

“There was a slight slow-down in the figures when Mrs Brown’s Boys: D’Movie came out, but even then it didn’t stop going up.

“Anyway…could you please excuse me? I’ve just seen an email from head office entitled “funding cuts” and now I’d quite like to eat a 10 piece KFC bucket on my own.”


NEWSTHUMP

[ariane] 16/8/2018 11:24

Elderly hold the key to unlocking housing crisis

By Joanne Atkin in Housing 16th August 2018 0

Home ownership prospects for younger people are in decline but the over-65s could hold the key to unlocking the housing crisis and help increase the younger generation’s chances of getting on the property ladder.

This is according to the third annual Retirement Confidence Index (RCI) from McCarthy & Stone, the UK’s largest retirement housebuilder, produced in conjunction with YouGov. The survey included a nationally representative sample of 3,000 people aged over 65 and 700 adults aged under 30.

The RCI found that three in five (60%) under-30s believe the UK needs more ‘later homes’ for older people, not just ‘starter homes’ for first-time buyers.

And an even greater number of pensioners (70%) feel the same way, saying there should be more focus on improving the provision of suitable housing options for older people.

Older generation share young adult’s drive to move

While younger people desperately want to get on the housing ladder, older people have an appetite for downsizing, according to the study.

McCarthy & Stone found that over a third (35%) of adults aged 65 and over would consider moving – representing 4.1 million pensioners.

Too many of these, however, are part of “generation stuck”, those pensioners who want to downsize but find they are blocked by limited options.

More than one in five (22%) of older people would consider a specialist retirement property – equivalent to 2.6 million people – but only around.162,000 retirement properties have ever been built for older homeowners.

Helping older people downsize and free up housing

According to McCarthy & Stone, if all those who are considering downsizing did so, it would equate to more than two million bedrooms being released into the market. This would also help release over £364 billion of housing equity, boosting the finances of over-65s.

The company has also found that for every person who moves into a McCarthy & Stone property, two to three properties are typically freed up in the housing chain. It argues that increasing the supply of suitable retirement accommodation would enable more retirees to downsize and free up housing stock that can be used by first-time buyers and young families.

Comment

Clive Fenton, chief executive of McCarthy & Stone, commented: “Both older and younger people see the benefits in providing better housing options for our ageing population.

“Millions of older people are looking for properties better suited to their needs, and young people are desperately trying to join the housing ladder. By providing more suitable housing, such as bungalows, retirement housing or other well-designed accommodation for later life, we can address a big part of the housing crisis.

“We absolutely understand the government’s focus on helping young people join the housing ladder, but if they are really serious about solving the housing crisis they have to recognise that helping older people to downsize to free up under-occupied property has to be a significant part of the solution.”

A range of options are open to Government to increase supply of suitable housing options for older people. This includes a one-off stamp duty exemption for older people when downsizing or moving into retirement housing, and reform of the planning system to encourage greater development in this sector.

McCarthy & Stone was disappointed to see very little reference to housing for older people in the revised National Planning Policy Framework, published on 24 July 2018. It understands government guidance on housing for older people will follow in the Autumn and urges the government to consider each of the points mentioned to improve the supply of suitable housing options.

[adrian j boris] 09/7/2018 07:07

Monday 9 July 2018 6:00am
Pensioners in the UK shelling out over £24bn in income tax
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Josh Mines
Josh Mines is a reporter for City A.M. covering telecommunications and marketing [..] Show more
Bank Of England Proposes Switch To Polymer Banknotes
Royal London said the amount of pensioners paying income tax had more than doubled since 1995-96 (Source: Getty)

The amount pensioners in the UK pay in income tax has ballooned to over £24bn, figures out today have shown. ​

Insurer Royal London obtained the information through freedom of information (FOI) requests to find out how much people over the state pension age were paying to the tax man in different parts of the UK.

In the latest year which HMRC had detailed figures for, 2015-16, Royal London said pensioners paid £24bn worth of income tax, with £21bn of it being footed by taxpayers in England.

Surrey pensioners shelled out the most, with a total tax bill of £961m, meaning they are paying more income tax than the entire retired population of Wales.

Kensington & Chelsea topped the list for the amount pensioners were paying in tax by local authority, as residents paid an average of £32,250 in 2015-16. That's around 27 times more than the area paying the least tax, Stoke on Trent UA, where pensioners paid just £1,192 on average.

The study also showed that the number of taxpayers over the age of 65 has doubled from 3.32m in 1995-96 to 6.49m in 2015-16 - although it's believed the number has reduced slightly to stand at 6.37m in 2018-19.

Read more: Pensioner households paying out nearly £9bn in income tax per year

Royal London added that more than a quarter of taxpaying pensioners were still in paid work, with 1.5m having an employment income and 500,000 getting an income from self-employment.

Steve Webb, director of policy at Royal London said:

Many people might assume that once you retire you cease to be of interest to the taxman. But these figures show that this is very far from being the truth. The number of taxpaying pensioners has nearly doubled in the last two decades. With talk of also requiring pensioners to pay National Insurance on any earnings or even pensions, the older population may start thinking of themselves as 'Generation still taxed'.

When planning for retirement it is vital to remember that the tax office will still want a slice of your income, which reinforces the need to put aside enough to secure a decent standard of living, even after the tax man has had his slice”.