Aging Doesn’t Have to Mean Isolation

speaker-0 (00:05.294)
Hey folks, thanks for joining us again. Today we have a special guest on the other side of the water from Ireland. We have Alison Bow. She is with Active Retirement Ireland. Alison, thanks for joining us. It always sounds better for people to explain exactly who they are and what they do rather than me saying it all. tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are.

speaker-1 (00:33.034)
Okay, thanks very much for having me on Neil. My name is Alison Bow. I am the Head of Policy and Advocacy with Active Retirement Ireland and Active Retirement Ireland is Ireland’s largest membership organisation for older people. So the clue is in the name. We are an organisation who represent people who are retired, are only

Our only ask is that people are retired from work inside or outside of the home. We don’t have an age range for joining because people can be retired at any age. We generally do represent older people. So people who are members of the organization are usually over the age of 65, but that’s not always the case.

speaker-0 (01:26.474)
Okay. Now when you and I were doing our introductory call, you mentioned that Ireland has a smaller retirement population. What was that number? Do you remember?

speaker-1 (01:39.288)
So I think we have a smaller population in general. So I think it’s always useful, particularly for the rest of the world, to bear in mind how small an island nation we are. Our total population is now just over 5.4 million people. So that’s the total population of the entire country. So I think that’s important for setting context and also people’s expectations. So around

15 to 16 % of the population are now over the age of 65. So I don’t have specific data on what percentage of that percentage are retired, but between 15 and 16 % of the population of the country are over the age of 65. So we’re a very rapidly aging society. So we have…

In total, about 800,000 older people in the country and that’s grown very, very quickly. So it’s grown more than 40 % in the last decade. And I think what’s really important there is the direction of travel, so to speak. So by 2040, we’re going to have around one in five people in Ireland who are going to be over the age of 65.

And that’s long term is going to increase significantly again. So that’s not just an Irish story. Europe is a rapidly aging society. And in Europe, one in five people is already over 65. people are, know, people’s lives are increasing. People are living longer. Birth rates are falling, which is adding to that.

very significant demographic. So we’re moving into a kind of a very different society very quickly. And aging is not a marginal issue anymore. It’s a huge demographic change. It’s really the biggest demographic change across Europe. So it’s very central now to how we think about longevity and people’s health and how people live their lives after retirement as well.

speaker-0 (04:01.526)
Okay. So with that vast of an aging population, by the way, part of the reason why I’m really interested in Ireland, actually two reasons. one of my earlier interviews, a gentleman for talking about retiring to other countries was talking about Ireland and getting Irish passports because then it opens up to all of Europe and that sort of thing. But the other is

A lot of states, lot of provinces here in North America have the same sort of population. So as a result, what you’re going through is something that will reflect back into these various different states and provinces here. So with that type of rapid changing, what are you starting to see from a change in society? How is your society changing? Do you get a sense of that?

speaker-1 (04:55.272)
Yes, and I think, I think really for me, I have a background as a health psychologist. So I work in policy and advocacy now, obviously with active retirement. But I do have a background as a health psychologist. So to me, the most prevalent issue there is loneliness. And

I think it’s surprising for a lot of people that we had a large scale piece of research that was carried out by the European Commission in 2022. And it actually surprisingly identified Ireland as the loneliest country in the European Union. So we had 20 % of residents of the country reporting feeling lonely most of the time or all of the time.

And that was well above the 13 % average in the European Union. So we have as a country, a small country, we have a reputation worldwide as, you know, for hospitality, for friendliness, for being great fun. But actually, the research has demonstrated very, very clearly that

that reputation doesn’t necessarily match up with reality of living here. we are the loneliest country in Europe. So it’s surprising for a lot of other nations who don’t think like that about Ireland. And there’s a huge amount of reasons for that. We have a high level of rurality. There are a lot of rural areas. People are socially isolated by where they live.

We have high migration levels from rural areas into cities, but also migration to other countries, which has left large parts of the country without many people living there. And our social infrastructure is very impacted by that. And it kind of contributes to this paradox that we have of being renowned for our friendliness and our sociability, but actually statistically being

speaker-1 (07:13.71)
the loneliest country in Europe. So my organisation, our primary ethos is to combat social isolation and loneliness. And that is the core reason that we exist. So as I said, we have 24,000 members and we have 500 plus, we’ve more than 500 active retirement associations around the country.

and they are self-run, self-organized groups of older people who essentially come together to combat loneliness.

speaker-0 (07:53.742)
OK. Did you say something like 20 % of your population or 20 % of retirement age people were depressed?

speaker-1 (08:02.958)
20 % of residents of the country reported feeling lonely some of the time or all of the time. Wow. So that is not exclusive to older people. that is 20 % of the entire population or the respondents, I should say, in that large scale piece of research by the European Commission reported that they felt lonely some of the time or all of the time.

speaker-0 (08:29.486)
Okay. So I think about all these conversations I’ve had and one of the things that consistently comes up is that when people retire, their social network is built into where they were working or what they were doing, including the housewives. They were connecting with other housewives or parents of the kids they were raising, that sort of stuff. And when the kids move, they lose those connections.

When you retire and leave the workplace, you lose those connections.

speaker-0 (09:04.908)
Am I hearing that people are having difficulty recreating those connections once they’ve left there? And I’m going to use the term workforce, even though I’m, I’m taught, including housewives in there. Yeah.

speaker-1 (09:21.26)
So I am going to speak specifically to older people because that’s the nature of my work.

speaker-0 (09:29.006)
That’s what we’re having this conversation about.

speaker-1 (09:31.072)
Yeah, exactly. So just I suppose just to clarify that I can’t speak for all of the respondents in that piece of research, which was a very important piece of research. But what I will say is that retirement is often thought of as a financial transition and it’s very much not just a financial transition. It’s a behavioral transition. It’s a psychological transition.

It is also a financial transition. But actually, ironically, that’s the part that people are normally prepared for. But what they’re not prepared for is the behavioral transition and the psychological transition. So when you give up work and as I said, inside or outside of the home. So when that changes, whatever that work may have been, you lose structure.

You lose your routine. You lose social contact very often. And I think the primary, well, maybe not the primary, but for me, one of the key issues is that men and women lose a sense of identity overnight, almost overnight. So you’ve got this lack of social contact possibly that you had on a daily basis, but you also have your sense of identity is gone.

So, you know, if you were very, very much tied up in your identity in the workplace and then suddenly you’re a retired person, it does ask some major questions, you know, within your your mental health frameworks. Who am I? What is my purpose? What do I do now? So it’s, you know, if you don’t replace that, that structure and that identity,

you’re at significant risk of withdrawing, socially withdrawing in activity. So both physical activity and cognitive mental activity. And you’re also at risk of isolation. So, you know, if people retire from work and they inadvertently retire from life, that’s a massive risk for big

speaker-1 (11:55.096)
becoming completely disconnected.

speaker-0 (11:58.542)
Okay.

So did this start, did you see a jump in this when the pandemic happened where everybody was locking down and staying home because that’s the natural isolation or is it just a natural progression of aging?

speaker-1 (12:18.126)
So I think the transition into retirement, those issues, you know, that I’ve just spoken about, they’ve always been there and possibly more so for men. But we can talk about that in a moment. But I think what happened during the pandemic really for us and what we saw in our organization was obviously our

our active retirement associations were not able to meet as they were socially. And that certainly had a very significant impact on our members, on older people around the country. So if you were already experiencing difficulties with that transition into retirement, but then you have a total ban for public health reasons on meeting up, on socialising.

That obviously had a very, very significant impact. And actually it’s only now, it’s only within the last year and a half, two years, that our active retirement associations have almost completely regrouped. So what we found was for a lot of older people, there was a lot of fear, I would say, is the remnants of the pandemic. you know, was a leftover from lockdown.

There was a huge amount of public health messaging which was directed largely at more vulnerable demographics. So, you know, children not being able to go to school, older people being advised that they were very at risk. And in the efforts to keep the public safe, I think it really, really had a huge psychological impact on a lot of our older citizens. And

They also became for a lot of people, they became very, very quickly used to maybe not as much social engagement as they had had previously. And that happened to all of us. know, life, life changed for everybody. People were working from home. People stayed working from home. Everything changed for every age group. And everything was brought online.

speaker-1 (14:42.99)
That was another significant issue for older people. So there was this forced digitalization and a lot of people in this country who were over a particular age did not have those necessary digital skills. They weren’t the digital natives. There was a level, I suppose.

speaker-0 (15:05.454)
I never thought of any of that.

speaker-1 (15:08.598)
Yeah. So and I mean, that’s from everything from having to access medical appointments to, you know, seeing a GP to, you know, any public services, everything was forced online. So if you were already socially excluded and you didn’t have the digital skills to suddenly move your life online, then that’s another layer of social exclusion, which left a real

significant impact on our older population.

speaker-0 (15:39.79)
Now you brought up earlier men… Jesus, you know what? That’s something I’m gonna talk to somebody else about. You mentioned men versus women. I was going to go there. I’ll tell you from my point of view, me personally, my social life revolves around what my wife tells me our social life is going to be.

So I don’t really notice that much difference other than I’m noticing I’m not seeing as many people simply because the entire family unit is starting to change. Let’s start it with a baseline from a cultural point of view. Is that similar way of things in Ireland? keep in mind, I’m here in Canada by nature. Canada has what? 42 million people.

in the second largest landmass in the world. We are by nature isolated, probably more dispersed than Ireland has for their population. So we’re kind of used to that sort of thing. I’m just wondering what the baseline culture is for Ireland before all this happens.

speaker-1 (16:59.924)
Yeah. Okay. So before all this happens, so you’re talking about pre pandemic pre

speaker-0 (17:07.502)
Pre-retirement. you have a retire… before retirement happens, there’s some sort of cultural way of doing things in Ireland. I want to make sure that… and because we’re both English-based cultures, because you have influenced the UK just as much as the UK has influenced you.

And Canada has taken that from the UK and grown up in there. There are, I’ll give you an example, Quebec French and the French in France are not the same, simply because we’ve grown up separately. So I want to baseline the cultural differences and sameness so that we know, okay, this is the way it is before retirement. Now, once we’ve gone into retirement, here’s what ends up happening from

Ireland’s point of view.

speaker-1 (18:06.794)
Yeah. Well, I’ll certainly answer it from my own organization’s research and I’ll tell you what we know as opposed to, know, I don’t want to put myself at risk of making broad sweeping generalizations about the culture of Ireland. But I will tell you what we know. We know that men are less likely to engage socially after retirement. We know that men are traditionally, historically, culturally,

more reliant on their workplace social networks. Okay. They are also more reliant on their spouse, which you mentioned, their spouse or their partner for social connection. So the real life examples of that, how are they more reliant on their workplace networks for social connection? That could be very much the after work drinks, the friends are the work colleagues for men.

a lot of the time. How are they reliant on their spouse for the social connection? Exactly what you just mentioned. So the spouse is going to be the diary planner, the social event organizer. We’re doing this on Saturday. You you need to be here for this on Sunday. We were invited to this. You’re coming with me. So we also know that men are less likely to join groups.

of any sort or organisations after retirement. Whereas women are more likely to have already been involved in those extra extracurricular groups, let’s say. we’re talking about women who were working inside or outside the home are far more likely to have been involved in their children’s school groups, their children’s school activities, volunteering activities and community led activities.

And women are also more likely to seek out those groups, those community social connections. And women are also more likely to talk about loneliness if they are experiencing loneliness. So, you know, there is a significant gender difference. Men lose their main social network when they leave work and they’re less likely to rebuild it. So that’s what we know for a fact.

speaker-1 (20:34.752)
So for many men, you know, leaving work can go from daily interaction with people who are colleagues, but also their friends. And that shift is very abrupt and it’s far more significant than it is for a lot of women.

speaker-0 (20:54.958)
Interesting. What happens, we’re now into, once retirement happens, people in the older ages, let’s face it, there’s going to be deaths in the family. There’s going to be the couples dispersing. Does it get worse from that point? Or does it, does, do the, the various partners in the relationship recover differently?

speaker-1 (21:24.046)
Again, I would say from our own research and our own experience with within active retirement Ireland and with our associations, I would say where a spouse has died. And again, this is something that came up very significantly during the pandemic. Sadly, the men in that relationship are even less likely to seek out any sort of extra social connection.

So they are far more likely to, you know, become more reclusive, more socially isolated. And I think something else to mention there, which is important, is that for older people in rural areas, men and women, they may stop driving.

So they may choose not to drive or they may have been medically advised not to drive. So if you’ve had a health incident, for example, if you’ve had a stroke or a cardiovascular issue, or if there’s any suspicion of the onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s, you may be medically advised not to drive yourself anymore. And that can be an absolute

you know, sorry to use the expression, but a nail in the coffin really in terms of social engagement, because if you’re in a rural area in a largely rural country such as Ireland, where the infrastructure is not necessarily set up to get older people from their house in the countryside to a community setting where there’s a group taking place, for example, or even just in to get the shopping.

you’re far more likely to be at risk of not seeking out that support because it’s just too difficult. So I think you have to bear that in mind as well. How do they find out about the support, the services? How do they get there? Are they reliant on their children or younger family members to bring them? And if they are,

speaker-1 (23:35.212)
what’s happened if you’ve got a country with huge amounts of migration. So migration from rural areas into cities. So the children are not there. The adult children are not there anymore. The grandchildren may not be there. They may now be living in Dublin or Cork or one of the major cities. And there’s nobody around except maybe other older people. And your spouse has died.

or, you know, you’re you’ve been on your own for a while. You may or may not be in good health. How do you go about seeking out those services or those supports? It’s very, very difficult. It’s very difficult. So we have this huge kind of infrastructure problem as well as a societal problem of loneliness, as well as other issues like migration and rural transport. So and it really, again, it

does just seem to negatively impact men more than women.

speaker-0 (24:35.95)
Okay, so we’ve identified the problem or problems, multiple problems. Your organization’s role is to impact policy within the Irish government, correct?

speaker-1 (24:50.944)
Yes, well, that’s my job.

speaker-0 (24:53.646)
That’s your job. So how is the Irish government dealing with this? Are they even thinking about this? Because I’ll tell you right now, I get the very distinct feeling here in North America, nobody’s really thinking about this. And I suspect that’s because we’re at the crest, the beginning of the wave of age coming in. So as a result, they haven’t started to anticipate dealing with it. How is the Irish government dealing with this? And what are some of the things you’re working on to try and get that changed?

speaker-1 (25:24.758)
OK, so that’s a big question. That is a big question. I’m going to start by saying that actually globally and Europe wide, in my opinion, in my humble opinion, the the longevity issue. So people living longer, people living longer lives, people being healthier for longer. The longevity issue is being seen largely, in my opinion.

by our governments, both in Ireland, across Europe, globally, as a longevity crisis. So it is being seen as people living longer. There is a narrative that exists that this is an economic burden. so really longevity should be our greatest social success. The fact that people are living so much longer.

and they are healthier and they are living independently in their own homes, this should be seen as a huge social success. But actually it’s being seen in economic terms and government policy terms as a crisis, a longevity crisis. So that to me is that’s the problematic narrative. OK, what you mentioned there about short termism in our policy making.

is a really significant secondary issue. So when you said people don’t seem to be thinking about this, I agree. There is almost, there’s almost a, we need to, we need to look at this. We need to do something about this. need, but it’s not happening. So we’re not progressing as rapidly as demographic change is happening. the, you know, the governments have not caught up with this.

And this is going to, you know, this this issue is going to not go away. It’s going to be an issue, an ongoing issue. And I I mentioned the statistics on aging at the start and, you know, that Europe is aging rapidly. So we do need to look at infrastructure around aging, you know, and hopefully it will happen to us all because

speaker-1 (27:47.252)
Aging is the best outcome. It’s certainly better than the alternative. Not sure who said that, Groucho Marx maybe. But aging is always better than the alternative. So we do need to look at infrastructure, but we also need to look at structural ageism in our policy making. And that is a huge issue. If the policy that is being made is

really just looking at future generations and youth issues. That’s not going to solve anything. So we have what I would see as a structural ageism causing really significant problems. And that means that the top down approach from our governments, you know, from policymakers in every country, they need to really reflect about where ageism is coming up, you know, and whether that’s to do with health,

or preventative health. We are currently campaigning on a shingles vaccine, for example, not an issue in the States. So we’re looking at access and equity to preventative health measures. And that’s just a specific example. But if we were to look at health in general and access to health, so what I would call health equity, know, that is

a structurally ageist issue. So if we can’t have our older people accessing health, then we’re not going to have preventative health measures and we’re going to have a health crisis. Loneliness is also a public health crisis because it’s very linked to physical decline, mental decline, so cognitive decline. It’s linked to the cardiovascular health. It’s linked with stroke. It’s linked with heart disease. It’s linked with dementia. So

We have loneliness, we have preventative health, we have all of these issues where if we didn’t have the short termism in our policy making, you know, we could be looking at all of us could be looking at a very healthy, long future ahead. There’s so many other areas. And like I mentioned, you know, rural transport and access to services and.

speaker-1 (30:08.468)
It really does filter down at every level of policymaking. ironically, even though most of our politicians are older people themselves, they’re not looking at that. Their focus is not on that. Their focus is on maybe issues that are affecting people here and now, housing crisis, issues around youth, issues around education, all very, very important. But we have to move past the short termism.

speaker-0 (30:39.864)
Do you see it getting better? Do you see them starting to become aware of the various different issues? By the way, you mentioned about the health, which is what I always hear because there’s the cost going into the healthcare system. So they’ll focus on that knowing that as we get older, we need the healthcare system that much more. That’s always been talked about. But things like…

mandatory retirements or the ageism in the retirement age range rather than just easing people in and out, so to speak, and all the various, the transportation side of things. That doesn’t seem to be talked about. Do you see it getting better?

speaker-1 (31:29.486)
I would like to say that I see it getting better.

speaker-0 (31:35.157)
Okay

speaker-1 (31:37.102)
I hope it’s getting better. This is what I do on a daily basis and this is what organizations in the aging sector are talking about, highlighting, fighting for on a daily basis. I would like to see the changes are happening, but it’s a big change. It’s a big change in policymaking for, you know, and

Governments change, parties come in and out. So the short term ism is kind of inherent in the system because we could have a minister for older people and then that minister will change with the next government or there’ll be a cabinet reshuffle. So, you know.

It’s difficult because really what we need is change at the structural heart of policymaking. And that needs to be really a global issue. needs to be something that older people are fighting for themselves as well. know, we can’t rely on that suddenly, you know, a policymaker suddenly waking up one day and going, well, I’m older myself now and I see, I see what it’s like, you know.

You know, within disability campaigning, there was this fantastic saying for a long time, nothing about us without us. And we need to hold on to that. So we need older people to self advocate as well. And there can be a kind of a maybe like a lethargy or a kind of a level of burnout where you think I did all that. I went to protests. I, know,

We took to the street, we did this in the 70s, we did this in the 80s, maybe we did this in the 60s. So there can be an element of kind of maybe re-motivating people to champion themselves as well, because we need older voices, you know, to make significant change.

speaker-0 (33:47.214)
It’s interesting, I talked with somebody last week and she had mentioned that, you know the no kings marches that were happening in the United States last week? She mentioned that the vast majority of the people there were older.

And we got discussing that a lot of the activism, may be the people that were activists in the 60s, then were in the 70s, then in the 80s, 90s, and now all the way up to now. that activism is just ingrained into the personality. So they’re now active, but they’re active on things outside of their own self-interest, for lack of a better term.

speaker-1 (34:27.575)
Yeah. Yeah. And we know we see that and we see it, you know, particularly to do with climate change. And we’ve had a lot of our members say, you know, I’m not really doing this for me because I’m not going to be around to see the change. I’m doing this for my grandchildren. I’m doing this for my for my children, you know. And so we see that, but we also see that kind of, you know,

It can be very difficult to keep up the good fight when you don’t see a change, you know, and that’s and that’s across the board at every single age group. If you’re not seeing the change, you know, be the change. But it’s very difficult to be the change when you’re not seeing the change. So that being said, you know, I mentioned our current campaign for a government funded shingles vaccine for people over the age of 65.

We launched a petition a few weeks ago and within two weeks we had more than 20,000 signatures on that petition. So we’ve, you and as I just bring that back to the digital access issues as well. So if we can look at in two, in a two week period, we’ve had 20,000 activists come online, sign the petition, say we want to see change on this issue, a preventative health issue.

What about the number, the huge number of people who maybe aren’t online, who feel the same way? So it’s about making policy change accessible to older people as well. You know, I have to look at how do we how do we bring these activists in? How do we, you know, how do we make it accessible for them to make a change? So there’s a lot. And again, that comes back to the kind of structural ageism issue. They may want to have a voice.

They may want to bring a particular issue to their government representative, to their public representative, but they’re not quite sure how to do that or they may not have the skills, such as digital skills, to do that. So you have to constantly bear that in mind. There is a silent number, probably a huge number, of silent individuals, but they’re not silent through their own choice.

speaker-0 (36:47.022)
Interesting. have a, in BC, British Columbia here, the government has a position called a seniors advocate, an ombudsman, advocating on behalf of seniors. I’m arranging for having that person, him be interviewed here. But when I look at the things that they’re focused on, they’re focused on

long term care. They’re, they’re not talking about the loneliest epidemic. They’re talking about the medical instances, but they’re not dealing with the transportation side of things. The you, you were, think you use the term infrastructure. The underlying infrastructure, social infrastructure of a

speaker-1 (37:37.304)
lecture.

speaker-1 (37:41.454)
Yeah, I mean, I have a few things to say on that point. We as an organization, we are part of an alliance of age sector NGOs in Ireland. And for over a decade now, we have been lobbying the government for an independent commissioner for older people. So almost identical to what you’ve described, you know, it’s not an ombudsman because it’s a

So we have, for example, an ombudsman for children, but an independent commissioner for older people, because that individual would sit outside the government and they would essentially be a kind of a watchdog to say, here’s where you’re failing. Here is where you’re not, you know, making the changes that you need to make. Here is where you are falling down, you know, in terms of aging policy, for example. Now, very interestingly,

In Northern Ireland, we have an independent commissioner for older people. We do not have an independent commissioner for older people in the Republic of Ireland. OK, so we have a small country where we are divided in that the North has an independent commissioner for older people. The South does not have an independent commissioner for older people. There’s also an independent commissioner in Wales, and this has.

worked tremendously. Okay. So we have these geographical divides where we know this works. We know the role has been hugely successful in representing older people and issues affecting older people. But we have been over a decade lobbying for for for exactly what you described. Okay. So that’s the first part of that. Then you mentioned the kind of the care narrative. Okay. So

That is the danger zone. The danger zone is that and Active Retirement Ireland have always said age is not synonymous with care. OK, so at some point in our life course, we all require care. Infants require care. Children require care. Teenagers, young adults, etc, etc. We all require care.

speaker-1 (40:02.856)
Aging is not necessarily synonymous with requiring care. if the third part of that answer, and it’s a very long answer, but the third part of this is that if we don’t have that social infrastructure, if we don’t prevent loneliness and social isolation, then we feed inevitably into physical and cognitive decline. OK.

And then physical and cognitive decline will lead to care being required. OK, so it’s a never ending vicious circle. So when I’m talking about needing to, you know, look beyond short termism, look beyond what do do with, you know, care is necessary. Care is very important issue. It’s an important issue for older people. Absolutely it is.

not negating that in any way, shape or form. But if you’re asking me about long term change and policy change and longevity and people living longer lives, then we need to go to the root cause of why people may end up needing care or being in full time care.

speaker-0 (41:19.11)
It’s interesting because while this entire conversation I was thinking in terms of going back to the retirement aspect, it’s retirement. You’re going along in your career and then you hit a wall and it’s called retirement as opposed to a transition, a smooth transition where away from career and up into your retirement ages, building up that social network before you actually need it.

That sort of thing. So.

what you’re talking about from a policy point of view, I’m not seeing people trying to make the changes to society that allow for that long-term mental health and spiritual health. We’re focused on the physical. I interviewed Dr. Helen Levretsky from the UCLA Longevity Center and her area of research is the mind, the body, and the soul.

And one of things she was saying is, in Western medicine, we just focus on the physical. A cardiologist focuses on the heart. That sort of thing. But her research suggests that when you deal with the mind and the mind is active, you live longer. When you’re dealing with those emotions, the spiritual side, you live longer, regardless of what you do for the physical.

speaker-1 (42:44.78)
Yeah, without doubt. there is, I mean, there is little else to say about the level of evidence that demonstrates that, you know? So, you you’re talking about hitting that wall at retirement. And as I said at the beginning of our conversation, people think of it as a financial transition. is largely not a financial transition.

Now there are elements of a huge financial transition. So for example, if you are dependent on, you know, the state pension in this country, that’s very, very limited. Our state pension is not benchmarked against cost of living or inflation. So you’re on a fixed limited income. And again, we come back into this vicious circle. If you were on a fixed limited income, you are living in a rural area.

You are not served by community services or rural transport links. What’s going to happen? You’re going to be on your own. You’re going to be socially isolated. You’re going to be lonely. So the evidence is there. Someone is socially isolated and someone is lonely. The cognitive decline begins. The physical decline begins. They are more likely to have falls. Those falls can lead into into further, you know,

requiring hospitalization, they may break a hip, they may need to spend some time in hospital, they may not come out of hospital. So, that’s apart from the human level of that, we need to look at that economic burden on the health system. So if somebody is lonely, or someone is socially isolated,

They begin to have that mental decline and that could be that could be a mental health issue. That could be depression from social isolation. Very, very frequently. You then are let’s let’s take for take, for example, an older gentleman who’s on his own. He’s in a rural area and the family have have moved away or they’re not in close proximity. He’s on his own. He starts to feel quite depressed. We know that he’s unlikely to talk about that.

speaker-1 (45:02.22)
So he’s unlikely to seek help. He may start to drink more alcohol. So he may start to find that actually on a daily basis, it’s getting earlier and earlier and he’s sitting in front of the television. He’s having a few drinks and then he’s going to bed. There’s no physical activity. There’s a lot of sitting around with the remote in the hand watching TV. There’s no interaction with other people. They might be drinking more.

they might become overweight because they’re again not involved in physical activity.

speaker-0 (45:38.446)
You’re describing me too much, Alison. Stop it.

speaker-1 (45:41.806)
starting to eat more, they’re starting to drink more. And then we have this culmination of a physical decline. So they might start to experience cardiac issues. there’ll be cardiovascular health issues. There’s mental health issues, there’s depression. And then how do we get out of that decline? You know, it’s a physical decline, it’s a mental decline. How do we bring that individual who and I’m

you know, that’s not a rarity that that happens a lot. How do we bring that person back to a place where they are socially engaged, physically active and joining back in with their community?

speaker-0 (46:25.198)
I can hear some people, I’m Canadian. We have much more of a social network that’s integrated into our government structures than south of the border. And I can hear people already saying, well, that’s what the family should be there for. I can tell you right now, where I live right now is because when I first bought a house, I couldn’t afford something close to where my parents were. My mom’s gone now.

And my dad is 94. He’s still the same age. He’s still living in the house I grew up in. But that’s a 75 minute drive away. And he can’t do that drive anymore. And I still have stuff I’m dealing with here. So my ability to go and support him is hard.

speaker-1 (47:15.982)
Correct, correct. And it’s exactly the same in Ireland. Like that, the majority, we have a housing crisis. The large majority of younger people cannot afford to stay where they grew up. you know, particularly if that’s a city or within reach of a city, because they’re the commuter belts. So people are moving, having to move away for work. They’re having to move far from home where they grew up in order to access their workplace.

but also to be able to buy a house or an apartment or a home. they are automatically, many, many people have emigrated completely from the country. So they cannot be there to support their parents. And on top of that, actually, it’s usually the opposite way round. So because there’s financial issues and because there’s a housing crisis and people are struggling, younger people are struggling,

to this sandwich generation, they are reliant on their older parents to provide the childcare for their own children. And that’s a huge untapped statistic economic area where are we really looking at all of the provided childcare that older people are providing for their children’s children? Because that’s not

speaker-0 (48:23.694)
Thank

speaker-1 (48:42.498)
That’s not something that the government takes into account. How much trouble would we be in here if we didn’t have the older people caring for the children, the grandchildren? you know, where younger people or people in their 30s and 40s are near in close proximity to their parents, very often they’re reliant on their parents to mind their own children, to look after them while they go to work.

They may not be able to afford crèche or, you know, childcare facilities. So it’s again this constant loop where the younger people in their 30s and 40s have had to move away and their parents are aging or in poor health. They cannot be there to look after their parents, you know. So our society is not set up for that model either.

speaker-0 (49:35.054)
That’s part of the reason why like TTN has a global retirement perspectives, why I’m talking with you. But there’s a different cultural perspective in the Asia Pacific area where the family unit is much more integrated. And it’s probably because it’s gone down this path before we did that maybe what the

family unit will end up looking like in Europe and in North America. I’m just…

speaker-1 (50:08.246)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, absolutely within Asia, for example, intergenerational living is the norm very often, you know, and that’s that that has been historically the norm. And actually in Ireland, to a point in time, that was the norm here as well. So rural families living in close proximity or together in the same house or, you know, children building their house on the family land.

near the farm, you know, that all changed dramatically. So with each economic crisis or economic boom, you know, the scattering happened and people were either forced to move away from their parents or, you know, they moved away through choice in search for a better life economically, you know, so.

That was the norm here and we did have intergenerational living as standard, but that changed. And I don’t think there’s any going back to that now, you know.

speaker-0 (51:13.976)
Yeah, think a lot of them. There’s somebody that I follow that has his own podcast, but he’s on the geopolitical side of things. And he was saying that when we industrialized, families started moving away from the farms. On the farms, kids were labor, were free labor. Whereas in cities, they’re an expense.

So that’s the reason why you ended up seeing a decrease in the population is we weren’t having as many kids because it was getting more more expensive.

speaker-1 (51:49.324)
Yeah, exactly. And also, you know, same in rural Ireland, you know, Ireland is traditionally a farming country and, you know, an agriculturally based country. The next generations didn’t necessarily want to take over the family farm. education improved. People said, no, do you know what? I’m actually going to go to college. You know, I think I’m actually going to go study architecture. I’m going to do, know, which, of course,

speaker-0 (51:50.669)
So.

speaker-1 (52:19.246)
You know, how fantastic to have that choice because previously it would have been like, nobody you’re staying here because you’re taking over the farm because you’re a fourth generation on this farmland. Yeah. So, you know, as as society changed the actual infrastructure of, you know, of Ireland and agriculture and what people did for a living, but also how people live together and how people support it inherently changed.

Hmm.

speaker-0 (52:49.934)
Interesting. Well, also we’re getting towards the end of the interview and it’s been a very interesting conversation. And I always ask my guests this one question. If you were to make a recommendation moving forward, one recommendation, what would that be?

speaker-1 (53:13.432)
That is a very big question. Who am I making the recommendation to?

speaker-0 (53:19.53)
Leave it open. Just think in terms of we are talking with people closing in on retirement, having retired, aging.

speaker-1 (53:29.902)
Okay. Okay. So if it’s, if it’s to somebody who is looking towards their own retirement, particularly if it’s a man looking towards his own retirement, I would plead with them to look at the holistic viewpoint on their own retirement. And by holistic, I don’t mean acupuncture or aroma therapy oils. I mean, don’t, please don’t. know.

Please don’t look at retirement as a financial transition only. Please do look at all of the aspects of it being a social transition, a psychological transition. Look at ways, plan for your own retirement about how you are going to stay engaged. Yes, how are you going to stay engaged financially? But look beyond the, well, initially I’m going to go on a three month cruise.

look at how you’re going to stay engaged with your community, you know, at a micro level, a macro level. You know, would you look at something like volunteering? Would you look at, you know, helping other older people in a community group? So how are you going to keep that social connection? Because the lack of social connection is really what leads to the loneliness, which is what leads to the decline. Yeah.

So that’s what I would say to somebody facing into their own retirement. And what I would plead with policymakers is can we please, please stop the short-termism in our policymaking? Can we please look at longevity as our greatest social success and treat it as that and stop treating it as an economic burden?

speaker-0 (55:24.21)
Alison, well said. I want to thank you very much for taking the time. For anybody that’s watching this video, will put links into the description for Alison’s group and Alison so that you’re able to reach out if you want more information. Alison, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (55:45.87)
Thanks.