Systems and Structures
Implications for Social Policy Arising from the Relationship between Health and Place for Older Australian Farming Couples
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Heather Downey
Globally, it has long been acknowledged that farmers are growing older. Australia is no exception, with the median age of farmers now fifty-three (ABS, 2012). Farmers are more likely to continue working well beyond the age at which most other workers retire and this scenario is reflected in the latest demographic data showing that a quarter of all Australian farmers is aged over sixty-five (ABS, 2012; Polain et al., 2011). Australian agricultural policy continues to construct the family farming model as the cornerstone of Australian farming (Australian Government, 2015). Yet, Australian farmers are increasingly ageing on farm in two-person households and without a next generation to follow. The cohort of older farmers is also contending with unprecedented economic and environmental change. Despite Australia’s devastating millenium drought of 1997-2010 bringing issues of rural decline to the fore, there is little discussion among policymakers of the age profile of farmers. In this scenario, this paper explores the health of older Australian farming couples as they contemplate their future. This paper draws on constructionist narrative research conducted in the Australian New South Wales Southern Riverina. Place identity is used as the theoretical frame to explore the relationship between place and health in the context of farmer ageing. Findings have implications for contemporary social policy responses to issues of rural hardship, water, ageing in place, and farming women’s vulnerability in later life.
Dependency Ratio: Qualitative Research on Aging in Peru
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessaca Leinaweaver
Peru, like many other developing countries, will soon be classified by demographers as “aging.” The complexities of population aging are exacerbated by other demographic shifts, including diminishing fertility, international migration, and the entrance of women into the formal labor market. This paper draws on ongoing ethnographic research into aging, kinship, and transforming social expectations in Lima and Ayacucho. It identifies the range of social expectations in the urban Andes regarding who is responsible for caring for older people – their younger kin, the government, and/or philanthropic institutions? I contrast these ethnographically-derived conclusions with the assumptions embedded within the “dependency ratio,” which implies that workers will care for their young and old. The assumption that this is so requires a great deal of optimism about filial responsibility. Although filial responsibility is often viewed as a cultural imperative, my ethnographically informed critique of this concept reveals it to be fraught and fragile.
