rural ageing

This story has real resonances for rural places it tells us:

The number of centenarians in the UK has quadrupled in the past 30 years, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. In the past decade alone, the number of people reaching the age of 100 has increased by 71%. The number of people over 90 has nearly trebled over the past 30 years.

The rise means there are increasing numbers of very old people being cared for by their children – themselves at an age at which they might have expected to be cared for, rather than to care for others.

Elderly filial carers are an under-researched group, but academics at University College London studying the over-50 population of England have found evidence that about one in 20 of those aged over 50 are caring for a grandparent, parent or parent-in-law.

According to separate research by Age UK, a third of the UK’s 6 million carers are aged 65 and over, and the number of carers aged 75 and over has increased by 35% since 2001. Over the past seven years, the number of carers aged 80 and over has increased from 300,000 to 417,000 – and continues to rise, the study found.