Aging & Social Change: Tenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Planning for aging populations has been a growing concern for policy makers across the globe. The World Health Organization has been instrumental in developing global strategies around aging and health. Integral to strategies for promoting healthy aging are those designed to bolster older people’s independence, which are often linked to services and care that allow them to remain in their homes and communities – frequently referred to as strategies for ‘aging in place’. Technological innovations - and especially the development of digital technologies - are viewed as important in helping to meet these goals, and may “offer new approaches to delivering care, while trying to bend the cost curve, and supporting ageing in place”(World Health Organization 2013). In this paper, we examine the discursive framing of technology in aging-in-place policies collected from partners in an international research collaboration on aging and technology. Analyzing policy documents from Spain, the Netherlands and Canada, we explore varying understandings of what ‘aging in place’ means, what kinds of technologies are mentioned, and what stakeholders are identified. We then analyze the framing of technological interventions in relation to values such as quality of life, autonomy/independence, risk management, social inclusion, ‘active ageing’, sustainability/efficiency of health care delivery, support for caregivers and older peoples’ rights. We argue that attention to making explicit these values is important to the role of social policies in imagining aging futures.