Independence at Risk: Older Californians With Disabilities Struggle to Remain at Home as Public Supports Shrink

Presents findings about aging Californians with disabilities who depend on paid public programs and unpaid help to live at home. Makes policy recommendations, including consolidating long-term care programs and enhancing support for caregivers

"Global Demographic Trends and Provisioning for the Future"

The world's population is aging. Virtually no nation is immune to this demographic trend and the challenges it brings for future generations. Relative growth of the elderly population is fueling debate about reform of social security programs in the United States and other developed nations. In the United States, the total discounted shortfall of Social Security revenues has been estimated at about $11 trillion, nearly two-thirds of that comes after 2050. However, this paper argues that those calling for reform have overstated the demographic challenges ahead. Reformers conclude that aging poses such a serious challenge because they focus on financial shortfalls. If we focus on demographics and on the ability to produce real goods and services today and in the future, the likelihood of a real crisis in social security in the United States and developed nations is highly improbable. Demographic changes are too small relative to the growth of output that will be achieved even with low productivity increases. This paper concludes with policy recommendations that will enhance our ability to care for an aging population in a progressive manner that will not put undue burdens on future workers. Policy formation must distinguish between financial provisioning and real provisioning for the future; only the latter can prepare society as a whole for coming challenges. While individuals can, and should, save financial assets for their individual retirements, society cannot prepare for waves of future retirees by accumulating financial trust funds. Rather, society prepares for aging by investing to increase future real productivity.

Fading Productivity - Making Sense of Canada's Productivity Challenge

The Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum demonstrates that Canada’s competitiveness is at its lowest in the last five years. This paper seeks to understand the major causes of the decreasing competitiveness and how these factors have interacted with productivity growth. The analysis shows that institutional inefficiency as well as excessive government regulations imposed on businesses are damaging to productivity and competitiveness. Weak investments in capital goods hinder the ability to grow and to create greater economies of scale. Sufficient government investment is crucial to the maintenance of competitive post-secondary institutions, whereas employer-supported training is an important factor in improving labour productivity and business sophistication.productivity, labour productivity, multifactor productivity, competitiveness, global competitiveness index, innovation, education and training

Developing National In-Home Caregiver Training Standards

This report incorporates discussion by experts on topics of paid in-home caregiver training standards, including curricula, accreditation, certification, career ladder, and caregiver support

The 10 Critical Imperatives Facing Cities in 2014

As we approach 2014, cities large and small confront challenges that not only impact the quality of life of those who live and work there, but the success of our entire nation. The National League of Cities is highlighting the most pressing of these challenges in this report. With more than 80 percent of Americans living in cities, and with cities producing more than 75 percent of our nation's economic output, it is imperative that we fnd solutions.1, 2 Cities across the country are innovating, but cannot and should not continue to go it alone. Partnerships among local governments, citizens, businesses, nonproft organizations, and federal, state, and county leaders are needed. Together we can ensure that our nation's cities thrive and continue to be centers of opportunity and national economic prosperity

Booms, Busts, and Echoes: How the biggest demographic upheaval in history is affecting global development

For much (and perhaps most) of human history, demographic patterns were fairly stable: the human population grew slowly, and age structures, birth rates, and death rates changed very little. The slow long-run growth in population was interrupted periodically by epidemics and pandemics that could sharply reduce population numbers, but these events had little bearing on long-term trends.demography, growth, global development

Disconnected aging: cerebral white matter integrity and age-related differences in cognition.

Cognition arises as a result of coordinated processing among distributed brain regions and disruptions to communication within these neural networks can result in cognitive dysfunction. Cortical disconnection may thus contribute to the declines in some aspects of cognitive functioning observed in healthy aging. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is ideally suited for the study of cortical disconnection as it provides indices of structural integrity within interconnected neural networks. The current review summarizes results of previous DTI aging research with the aim of identifying consistent patterns of age-related differences in white matter integrity, and of relationships between measures of white matter integrity and behavioral performance as a function of adult age. We outline a number of future directions that will broaden our current understanding of these brain-behavior relationships in aging. Specifically, future research should aim to (1) investigate multiple models of age-brain-behavior relationships; (2) determine the tract-specificity versus global effect of aging on white matter integrity; (3) assess the relative contribution of normal variation in white matter integrity versus white matter lesions to age-related differences in cognition; (4) improve the definition of specific aspects of cognitive functioning related to age-related differences in white matter integrity using information processing tasks; and (5) combine multiple imaging modalities (e.g., resting-state and task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging; fMRI) with DTI to clarify the role of cerebral white matter integrity in cognitive aging

Rising transport costs and urban development: Hamburg - a city of the future

In order to derive a broadbrush picture of the effects of rising transport costs on the prospective urban development of the city of Hamburg, the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) has set up a joint research project together with alstria First German REIT. The present HWWI Policy Paper briefly summarizes the central results of the project and derives policy recommendations with a clear focus on Hamburg. --