The majority of Canadians 80-plus have positive attitudes towards old age, report says

Older Canadians are optimistic about aging A survey of the National Institute on Aging found out that older Canadians keep a positive mindset amid struggles related to ageism.

The majority of Canadians 80 and older have positive feelings about aging, according to a new report.

The research, released on Wednesday by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), surveyed Canadians 50 and older to evaluate the social well-being, financial security, health and independence of Canada's aging population.

Aiming to assess the broader experience of getting older in Canada, the survey found that participants 80-plus reported the most positive outlooks on aging, with 75 per cent of that cohort rating high well-being, social connections and financial security, despite diminishing health concerns commonly associated with old age.

"There is an old stereotype about lonely older people," Keith Neuman, one of the NIA report authors and the executive director of the Environics Institute, told CTVNews.ca during a phone interview.

"We imagine, in some ways perhaps, that the oldest Canadians are the (most lonely) because nobody is around anymore, or they're on their own. But certainly in terms of the oldest Canadians who are still living in the community – in other words, not in home care or in nursing homes – they actually seem to have good social connections."

Neuman added that, generally speaking, positive outlooks towards getting older actually increase with age.

"Even with health status declining, and an increasing number of chronic health conditions associated with aging, the most positive outlook, in many respects, tends to be the oldest part of the cohort we're looking at. They also tend to have fewer financial concerns and, in some sense, feel better about their social connections," he said.

NIA's report found that 78 per cent of surveyed Canadians 50 and older feel more comfortable being themselves as they age, 66 per cent report having a "strong sense of purpose" and more than half agree that their general feelings about getting older have become more positive with time.

Overall, the vast majority (95 per cent) of respondents report holding at least one positive view on getting older.

Poor health and inadequate income

Natalie Iciaszczyk, another study author and the research program manager at the NIA, said these findings offer a unique and positive takeaway that "goes against public perception towards aging."

She added, however, that these results don't tell the complete story of what it means to get older in Canada.

"Our results show that consistently, across all of the indicators of aging, those who report poor health or inadequate incomes are doing really poorly and struggling," Iciaszczyk told CTVNews.ca during a phone interview.

She said that when looking at respondents who report poor health and inadequate income, they account for "roughly 40 per cent of the population 50 and older."

That translates to around six million Canadians, she explained.

"When we see just how much worse off they are among all of our indicators of aging, that is a really big red flag and something to be concerned about while looking to the future," Iciaszczyk said.

The NIA's report, which also covers experiences of age-based discrimination, financial security, social isolation and loneliness, is the second addition to a 10-year series on Canada's aging population, Iciaszczyk told CTVNews.ca.

"Hopefully in the next three to four to five years we'll be able to tell if these numbers and proportions are staying consistent, (whether) they are increasing as a greater share of our population does enter 65 and older," she said.

Methodology:

The 2023 NIA Ageing in Canada Survey was conducted online between June 27 and Aug. 7, 2023, with a representative sample of 5,875 Canadians aged 50 years and older living in the country's 10 provinces. The survey, comprised of 83 questions, was administered using standard survey industry recruitment and confidentiality protocols. The sample was stratified by age, region, gender and education level, to ensure good representation across these strata. The final data were weighted by the population (per the 2021 Census).