Thank you very much for the invitation to appear.
I am going to start at slide 3. Seniors account for a growing proportion of the population. The population we have been asked to report on is the situation of older women in Canada. The population of both males and females in Canada continues to age.
There are now 3.2 million women over the age of 65 in Canada. Nearly one in five of all women in Canada is over the age of 65. Between 2011 and 2016, the number of people aged 65 and older grew by 20%. That's four times the national rate. It was the fastest growth rate for this group in seven decades. This reflects the transition of the large cohort of baby boomers into their senior years.
As the chart demonstrates, the share of older women within the overall population should continue to increase. By 2031, just 14 years from now, the number of women aged 65 and above could reach 5.1 million, or 24% of the total female population. It is projected that these trends will continue.
At the same time, the senior population will become increasingly diverse. Today, close to 30% of women over the age of 65 are immigrants; by 2062, almost 50% of seniors could be foreign-born. This may have implications for the source and characteristics of income security, which can be quite different from one population subgroup to the next.
Slide 4 shows us other census results. An increasingly large share of the senior population, particularly women, lives alone or in collective dwellings. That's especially the case for older age groups. These trends will probably continue with the aging of baby boomers, who are even more likely to live alone than previous cohorts of seniors, as the chart shows.
I'm going to now turn to another perspective on collective dwellings. Slide 5 examines the oldest old, those aged at least 85. One-third of Canadians aged 85 and older live in collective dwellings, such as seniors residences and nursing homes. Our latest census results show that there is a strong gender dimension to the issue of older people living in collective dwellings. In 2016 more than 180,000 women aged 85 and above were living in collective dwellings, compared with more than 60,000 men. The vast majority of these women lived in a nursing home or in a mix of nursing home and seniors residence.
Slide 6 describes how transition into nursing homes often happens because of health issues. Our research shows that the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia is strongly correlated with entry into institutional care. Our macro-simulation projections indicate that the number of Canadians with such conditions will rise in the coming years, because of both the increasing prevalence of such conditions and the growing population of older Canadians susceptible to such conditions. There are also important gender differences to consider. In this context, additional health care costs associated with Alzheimer's are projected to be about $13 billion by 2031.
Slide 7 describes the current situation in terms of seniors' incomes. It indicates that family and individual incomes have been increasing over the past four decades, and especially since the early 2000s. Both employment income and private retirement income are responsible for that increase.
So today's seniors are healthier and more likely to work than previous generations of seniors. In addition, men and women over the age of 65 are more likely to receive an income through private pensions.
However, if you look at slide 8—low-income rates—as was mentioned before, the proportion of people who are low income, which happens when a family's after-tax income falls below a given income threshold, has increased since the late 1990s. The low-income measure used here is a relative measure of low income and can be interpreted as the share of the population that has low income relative to the median family.
Why did low-income rates increase among seniors? It's not because the incomes of seniors fell, but rather because the incomes of other Canadians grew faster, which raised the low-income threshold. In other words, seniors' incomes have fallen behind those of other Canadians.
Another important point with respect to low income is that some groups are more at risk of being in the low-income group than others. They include older women who are not in an economic family, i.e., those who do not live with family members or are living alone, older women with a disability, aboriginal women, and recent immigrant women.
That being said, slide 9 shows that government plays an important role in reducing low income, especially among seniors. To evaluate the impact of transfers on low income, it is possible to calculate the low-income rate before and after the inclusion of transfers. While government transfers reduce low income by about 50% for the overall population, they reduce low income by more than 70% among seniors. That is largely because government pensions, such as the OAS, GIS, and CPP, represent the largest source of income for seniors at the bottom of the income distribution.
As shown on slide 10, other factors are important for the well-being of seniors. That includes access to private pensions, pension savings, accumulated wealth and the ability to participate in the labour market.
The coverage provided by a retirement pension is important. It represents a significant source of income for many seniors in Canada.
However, it should be noted that the proportion of women covered by a retirement pension has remained relatively stable over the past two decades. That proportion has dropped among men. Right now, women are more likely to be covered by a private pension plan than men.
Finally, of course, social and community support is important for the economic well-being of senior women. For example, half the women with close friends or close family members rate their health as excellent or very good, compared with 33% of those with no close friends.
That is the end of the presentation. I encourage you to have a look at our next census releases, which will be October 25 and November 29.
Thank you.