Demography of Aging in the Nordic Countries

Abstract

Bibliographic note:The author has a background in sociology and social work and has mainly done work on family care and public services for older people, in the Nordic countries and internationally. These studies have dealt with both micro aspects and macro features of care, such as local variations in needs and service coverage. A recent study for the Swedish government (2006) on informal care giving is a response to growing interest in this topic in the Nordic countries, in another (2008) he has scrutinized policies and practices of family care for elders in Europe. ABSTRACTAgeing of the population took place remarkably early in the Nordic countries, and most so in Denmark and Sweden. A special feature of Nordic older people are decling but still high rates of singlehood and childlessness. The streamlined patterns of older people either living alone, with spouse only or in institutional care, with few other varieties, began earlier in the Nordic countries. Unmarried cohabitation and livingapart-together relationships (LATs) is common among older persons here, as are also long-lived marriages and strivings of older people to establish independent lives. Institutional and other public care has been relatively well organized for centuries in this region, but was up till recently a prerogative for poor people with no one able or willing to care for them. A minority eventually used these services half a century ago. Now the large majority will have used them before they die, but broader take-up comes at a price: needs assessments are increasingly stricter and service use much briefer than before. Today's public services are remarkably egalitarian, adjusting for sizable class-differences and local variations in health and living alone. Very few older people live with off-spring today (especially in Denmark and Sweden) but apart from that, patterns of kinship and geographical closeness of kin differ little from those of continental and southern Europe. Interestingly, many older persons are givers rather than receivers in transactions with their social environment, including care giving. Peculiar for the Nordic countries is not only relative acceptance of state interventions, but also of "overlap" between family support and public services for older people in need of assistance. It is rare to find needy persons without support; as cutbacks in public services (the case of Sweden) have been off-set by increasing family support.

Ethnoculturally-profiled care: Dementia caregiving targeted towards Middle Eastern immigrants living in Sweden.

“…A great deal is known about ageing in Sweden, both in terms of the demographics of ageing (Sundström 2009) and how it (historically) has been uniquely shaped by its locally controlled services for older people (Davey, Malmberg and Sundström 2014). However, contemporary Sweden is also shaped by the fact that since World War II, due to migration patterns, Sweden has gone from being a relatively homogenous country (ethnoculturally speaking) to becoming a multicultural and multi---ethnic one (Hannertz 1983;Antelius and Kiwi 2015).…”

Retirement and Aging Parents in the Swedish Population

“…In addition, informal care, particularly care provided by middle-aged daughters and wives, has increased in Sweden (Szebehely 1999;Szebehely and Ulmanen 2009). Although the extensive public eldercare in Sweden has strengthened women's participation in the paid labor force (Lilly et al 2007;Sundström et al 2002;Ulmanen 2013), access to informal care has increased partially due to the increasing availability of kin (Sundström 2009) and the decline in the use of formal care due to eligibility restrictions (Sundström et al 2002;Ulmanen and Szebehely 2015). Scholars argue that dependence on family support networks could become more important in the coming decades (Sundström et al 2006;Marta Szebehely and Trygdegård 2012).…”

Partner care, gender equality, and ageing in Spain and Sweden

“…Each new Swedish cohort, including older persons, has more family ties than before (Gaunt 1996;Sundströ m 2009). This has consequences for family care and for obligations and entitlements over the life-course (Matras 1990).…”