{"id":5960,"date":"2019-10-16T09:09:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T06:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5960"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","slug":"south-african-study-shows-how-unhealthy-ageing-takes-its-toll-on-health-and-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/16\/south-african-study-shows-how-unhealthy-ageing-takes-its-toll-on-health-and-income\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Study Shows How Unhealthy Ageing Takes Its Toll On Health And Income"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By<\/strong> <strong>Carlos\nRiumallo Herl<\/strong>, <strong>David Canning<\/strong> &amp; <strong>Mark A. Collinson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Population ageing is\noften associated with health-related challenges. But its effects also reach\nother spheres of life. In particular, an ageing population has a big impact on\ncountries\u2019 economies.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w16705\">Research<\/a>&nbsp;shows\nhow it can influence a country\u2019s economic growth. And a similar effect can be\nfound at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/ageing-and-society\/article\/ageing-income-and-living-standards-evidence-from-the-british-household-panel-survey\/3825CF5F118D6AFC9C3F0A9BFBFDE592\">household\nlevel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is of greater relevance given there is a greater share of the population reaching older age across the world. This had made it even more important to understand how ageing influences household well-being, what challenges exist, and \u2013 more crucially \u2013 how policies can be designed to improve the general welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2212828X18300768\">research<\/a>\u00a0in South Africa seeks to understand how different social policies can influence health and income at older ages. The idea is to contribute to the development of evidence-based policy making. We believe that our findings are relevant to other developing countries too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our research has\nbeen conducted under the umbrella of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/haalsi.org\/\">Health\nand Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of a community in South Africa<\/a>.\nIt\u2019s been conducted in 31 villages in rural northeast South Africa, close to\nthe border with Mozambique since 2013. The study, which is ongoing, has\ninvolved collecting income and health information on older people approximately\nevery two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first\nstudy of its kind in Africa but joins a large family of studies that follow the\nsame methodology to explore the links between ageing, income, and health across\nmany countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ageing, jobs and\nhealth<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ageing can influence a households\u2019 economic well-being because it has a bearing on employment. In our study, we have seen employment rates drop off even before people reach retirement age. In South Africa, there is no legal retirement age, but men and women qualify for an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sassa.gov.za\/Pages\/Older-Persons-Grant.aspx\">old age grant at 60<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means that a\nlarge share of older people who are still in active age do not participate in\nthe labour force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are two\npotential explanations for this. One is the very high levels of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/publications\/P0211\/P02112ndQuarter2017.pdf\">unemployment<\/a>&nbsp;in\nSouth Africa. This is affecting older people too. Being out of the labour force\nis strongly associated with lower incomes and thus a lower capacity to consume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/south-african-study-shows-how-unhealthy-ageing-takes-its-toll-on-health-and-income-124935\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Carlos Riumallo Herl, David Canning &amp; Mark A. Collinson Population ageing is often associated with health-related challenges. But its effects also reach other spheres of life. In particular, an&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}