Footsteps

Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be,” Rabbi bin Eszra says in the 1850 sonnet. That is not so here, reveal studies presented at the “Philippine and Global Perspective on Aging” at University of San Carlos in Cebu.

The elderly—60 years and above—constitute the fastest growing group today, Soccoro Gultiano of University of San Carlos Population Studies Foundation said. The numbers of middle-aged (39 to 49) and “near old” (50 to 59) are rising. Most are women. They’ll be the largest population cluster a decade from now.

Within this group, the poor get the short end of what really matters: life spans. Infant mortality rates in poor families crest at 40 percent. But within high walls of well-to-do enclaves, it’s down to 15 percent. Yet, “life is the threshold at which all other hopes begin.”

Schooling makes a crucial difference. Infant deaths crested at 32 out of every hundred for mothers stuck with skimpy elementary schooling. It is different with a mother who reached college. Their infant deaths were tamped down by a third. Poorer and less educated women also bore more kids: five compared to two in richer homes.

Life spans for Filipinos have been on the upswing. Male life expectancy in 1970 was 57 years and rose to 66 in 2013. Women tend to live longer. Filipina life expectancy, which stood at 61 years old in 1970, climbed 72 in 2013. Good enough? See that in an international context. “UN Human Development Report” states that 2013 average life expectancy for Thais stood at 74. It was 79 years for Cubans and 81 for Singaporeans. In next door Hong Kong, it is 83—and rising.

Given this age-structural transition, policy makers need to play closer attention to the “double burden of disease and malnutrition,” Gultiano suggested. Majority of the children who will become young adults come from the poorer homes. “Whether most of them will actually survive to old age is the question.”

Sure. There have been greater strides in the length of remaining life among Filipinos who turn the corner of 60 years of age, University of the Philippines Population Institute’s Grace Cruz told the conference. “But there is a substantial gender gap.” More elderly women, than men wheedle away “their remaining life in functional difficulty or inactive state.”

Longer life spans over the last four decades benefited the youngsters more than the elderly. And “the female older people” squeezed more advantage “than their male counterparts.” Health gains translate into “longevity gains.” This is most marked in the sharp dip in infant mortality rates, over the last 25 years. In 1990, 57 kids out of 1,000 live births died. That slumped to 23 in 2013.

Yet, that dip will not be enough for the Philippines to meet it’s commitment under the Millennium Development Goal 2015 target of 19 deaths per thousand births. Consistently, the research data revealed “improvement in functional heath status.” You see that in the shrinking numbers of those afflicted with at least one difficulty, for example, walking, feeding dressing to bathing.

“Functional health status improved across all age groups. Overall, elderly women will spend more of their twilight years in disability.”

How do you explain this shift? More Filipinos are staying in school longer., Cruz said. Rates of smoking and drinking have slumped too. There have been beefed up government services as mirrored by doubling in the numbers who hold a senior citizen card.

Cruz tacks on a number of caveats: Richer and better educated oldsters “have higher and better awareness of senior citizens privileges.” Also, “health insurance coverages remain low.” This is most apparent among older women. A mound of “unmet need for health services” persists.

Recent laws tried to close the gap for poorest of the elderly. Republic Act 9336, for example, allocates 1 percent of government agency budgets for seniors. RA 9994 mandates automatic enrollment of seniors in a financially strapped PhilHealth program. Hence, there is a need to further sharpen targeting of services.

That’d be vital to ensure that limited resources will prioritize the poorest. Young married Filipinos value children as “investments” or “insurance” who’ll care for them when they grow old. As it turns out, many of the elderly find themselves strapped as major breadwinners when their strength is ebbing, Office of Population Studies Alan Feranil notes.

When parents work overseas, elderly are all too often roped in as surrogate parents to grandchildren. (In 2013, there were 1.8 million Filipinos who worked abroad. Their remittances grew by 8.5 percent.) Still, far too many of the elderly are abandoned by their children hard-pressed to support their own families.

Many overseas Filipino workers “become strangers to their children.” Feranil earlier co-authored a study on “Dietary patterns and depressive symptoms among Filipino women.” “Diets influence the biology underpinning depressive illnesses” among Filipinos, it reports.

This raises concern as more shift “from traditional to western diets, typical of a country in nutrition transition.” From the Research Institute for Mindanao Culture, Dr. Ma. Teresa Sharon Linog analyzed “prevalence of malnutrition and other preventable” risk factors among the elderly in Cagayan de Oro City. Among other things, she reported that poverty resulted in high nutrition risk among 53 out of every hundred respondents.

Wives give more of the limited food to their spouses. Majority had “two or three medical” concerns, including teeth loss and oral lesions.

“Deterioration of mental health is increasingly marked.”

“Ang tunob sa karaang dili mapala,” a Visayan proverb says. “The footsteps of the old can never be forgotten.”

Read more...