Canada is world’s fifth-best place to grow old, report says

Theglobeandmail.com
Sept. 9, 2015

Canada is the world’s No. 5 country to grow old, according to a report that also found vast gaps in data about the world’s elderly - gaps that threaten to undermine global efforts to improve their living standards.

The report, the Global AgeWatch index, is created by HelpAge International, a nonprofit organization that calculates an index of the best and worst countries in which to grow old. It gave Canada high marks for its health-care system and income security for retirees.

THE BEST 10 COUNTRIES

• 1. Switzerland
• 2. Norway
• 3. Sweden
• 4. Germany
• 5. Canada
• 6. The Netherlands
• 7. Iceland
• 8. Japan
• 9. United States
• 10. United Kingdom

THE WORST 10 COUNTRIES

• 1. Afghanistan
• 2. Malawi
• 3. Mozambique
• 4. Palestinian territories
• 5. Pakistan
• 6. Tanzania
• 7. Zambia
• 8. Rwanda
• 9. Uganda
• 10. Iraq

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

The index is based on data from only 96 countries, including all of the most developed and affluent. Poverty rates among older people are missing from data in at least 93 countries, many of them among the least equipped to compile this information, according to the report. “The big story this year in the index is that millions of older people are invisible, living their lives in countries where information on the quality of older age is missing from international data sets,” Toby Porter, chief executive of the organization, said in releasing the 2015 ranking.

The organization issued the report as members of the United Nations prepare this month to formally approve the Sustainable Development Goals, a list of objectives aimed at eliminating poverty, protecting the environment and ensuring universal prosperity by 2030. Against a backdrop of global aging, HelpAge International said, the missing information on older people could distort actual trends, and “there is a danger that well-being in older age is going backwards, not forwards.”

Even for countries included in the index, data showed a widening disparity between the richest and poorest. The gap in life expectancy at age 60 between the countries at the top and bottom has increased to 7.3 years, compared with 5.7 years in 1990.