A growing population of older adults and differing levels of accessibility to grocery stores and healthcare across the country could lead to a critical issue for the U.S., Northeastern researchers say.
America is aging, and it’s not ready, according to new research.
With the country getting older, researchers at Northeastern University set out to investigate whether access to essential services like grocery stores, health care and housing are equally accessible for America’s aging population.
In a new paper, they not only found disparities in access but, more worryingly, a gap in infrastructure and policy to help America’s aging population now and in the future.
“At this stage, we are not ready for the aging population,” says Ryan Wang, an associate professor and vice chair for research of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern.
“Population aging is not a critical social issue at this point in the U.S. compared to some other countries — Korea, Japan, some European countries — but that does not mean that it will stay like this. … We predict that without a significant policy shift, many of the demands for the aging population in the society will not be met.”
Using a massive amount of mobility and demographic data, including visitation patterns based on GPS, U.S. census data and environmental data from the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers were able to assess how easily aging populations in communities nationwide could access specific points of interest. This primarily included grocery stores, health care facilities and housing service providers.
By analyzing all this data, they categorized communities as either high-aging, where over 50% of residents are 65 or over, or low-aging, with under 20% of residents 65 or over. They then were able to track how many visits residents of those communities made to certain points of interest. If a high-aging community made a certain amount of visits to essential service providers within a 5-mile radius, it was considered accessible.
Contrary to his hypothesis, Wang says that, on the whole, researchers didn’t “observe significant disparities” in accessibility across the country. However, zooming into specific regions and even cities or counties, there were some notable differences in terms of what the researchers labeled the Fairness Index.
“In different places, like in Florida, because there are more aging populations, there are more policies toward meeting the needs of the aging population,” Wang says. “But then in other states, like Arizona or California, their results are mixed. Some [places] are better, some are worse.”
There are also disparities when it comes to accessing different kinds of services. Housing was more accessible in high-aging communities, while access to groceries was more limited. Meanwhile, aging-specific services like nursing care and home health care were largely more accessible in high-aging communities, although much less accessible than more broadly used essential services. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t troubling service deserts.
“One extreme case of that is that 70% of high-aging communities in Arizona don’t have sufficient accessibility to those services,” Wang says. “In other states, it’s not that extreme but could be problematic compared to the other more general essential needs.”
With America’s aging population growing, the need for those services will be even more important in the coming decades, Wang adds.
Currently, Wang says the country isn’t facing a serious aging issue, partially because the immigration of younger people to the U.S. helps maintain a more stable population. But that won’t remain the case, and the country needs to prepare to help its aging population or else these disparities will get even deeper.
For Wang, the solution is not only providing more essential services but designing our cities and towns in ways that help older adults access those services. Wang says ideas like the 15-minute city could be a potential solution for policymakers and urban planners alike.
“We want the aging population to be more mobile,” Wang says. It’s good for their mental health, for their physical health, for their neuro-psychological health, but at the same time, there are more constraints or obstacles for them to be mobile. … Are we developing these places [and] developing infrastructures to align with their needs? That matters and that also matters in the future as the society and population in the U.S. ages over the next 30, 50 years.”