Editorial | The crisis of a grey Jamaica

The Government’s proposed public education programme, targeting families and other unpaid caregivers of elderly Jamaicans, is a welcome and necessary initiative.

People over 60 are Jamaica’s fastest-growing demographic. And the available evidence suggests that it is mostly family and friends, primarily middle-age women rather than paid carers, who provide the bulk of support to elderly folk. Most have no training for this difficult task.

While The Gleaner applauds this project, the Government has substantially more work to do to help Jamaica adjust to being an increasingly grey society. Not least of what should be done is a five-year audit of the implementation of the 2021 update of the National Policy for Senior Citizens.

The island’s demographic data underlines the urgency of this matter. Around the time of Jamaica’s independence in 1962, over 40 per cent of the island’s population was below the age of 15. Fewer than five per cent were over 65.

Jamaica had a young population. The median age was around 19 years 6 months. Today, it is 34. By 2050, it will be 46.8 years.

Indeed, the proportion of Jamaicans who are now under the age of 15 is about half of what it was in 1960. However, those over 65 have doubled, hovering at close to 10 per cent of all Jamaicans.

By 2050, the demographers say, the number of Jamaicans at the official retirement age of 65, or older, will be close to 19 per cent. Over that same quarter-century, those 14 and under will account, according to United Nations projections, for 12.5 per cent.

STAGNANT AND DECLINING

This demographic trajectory is reflective of a stagnant and declining population in recent years, as women, since the 1980s, have had fewer children.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Jamaican women of childbearing age, on average, had 5.47 children. Towards the end of the 2010s, it was less than half that level. Today, on average, Jamaican women have 1.9 children, which is below the 2.1 that demographers say is required to merely keep a society’s population stable, unless there is inward migration.

As the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) expressed the situation in its 2023 Economic and Social Survey: “The reduction in the TFR (total fertility rate) to below replacement level fertility can lead to long-term demographic challenges, including the absolute decline of the population.”

The PIOJ added in that report: “Jamaica’s population age structure reflects an ageing population, where the child population is declining and the working age population and elderly segments are expanding.

“This is usually reflected in the median age, the age that halves the population, that is, there are as many persons above as there are below the median … .Jamaica’s median age at the end of 2023 was 30.6 years, compared with 30.46 years in 2022 and 28.9 years in 2015.”

Bluntly put, there are now, and will be, more people in the society who will need levels of support as they age. But many people who provide care are not as equipped to do the job as the circumstances demand. It is against that backdrop that the public education initiative, to be overseen by Professor Denise Eldemire-Shearer, executive director of the Mona Ageing and Wellness Centre, is timely. It is being supported by three government ministries: health and wellness; labour and social security; and education and information.

“The video scripts have already been done,” Professor Eldemire-Shearer said. “We are going to produce 15 three-minute videos … and we are going to have sessions … [targeting] family caregivers.”

That is good to help family caregivers, generally women who themselves are creeping up to ages when they, too, may need support, navigate an often difficult terrain.

However, being older and perhaps less mobile does not necessarily mean total incapacity.

“Many older people still want to be active, still want to be in charge, but they may need a little assistance,” Professor Eldemire-Shearer said.

SIX KEY GOALS

That is part of the context against which the government must assess what has been done, and the success achieved so far, with respect to the six key goals outlined in its senior citizens policy:

• Increased participation of senior citizens in all spheres of society;

• Improved income security and social protection coverage for senior citizens;

• Adequate and supportive health and wellness systems for senior citizens;

• Improved independence, security and safety for senior citizens;

• Enhanced family support systems and community solidarity from interaction with senior citizens; and

• Strengthened institutional and infrastructural networks for partnership, collaboration and governance.

Some gains have been made, but we are not convinced that this matter of a greyer Jamaica, and the social and economic complexities that will arise from it, is being attended to with the urgency and robustness that it requires.