Aging in Place: Coordinating Housing and Health Care Provision for America’s Growing Elderly Population

Kathryn Lawler

W01-13: The elderly population is rapidly expanding while the core tax-paying population is shrinking. The ratio of working Americans to retired Americans will drop from 5 to 1, to 2 to 1 over the next fifty years. As the elderly population grows, and subsequently the need for adequate elderly health and housing services grows, the resources to provide services will decrease. Finding a more efficient means of service delivery is of paramount importance. Today, however, the current connections between elderly health and housing are tenuous at best. As a result, the most desirable and most cost-efficient method of aging — aging in place — is difficult, even under the most ideal conditions…