Intergenerational transfers and population ageing in African countries

1. Intergenerational transfers and population ageing in African countries Barthelemy Kuate Defo, PhD, MPM Professor of Demography & Preventive Medicine, University of Montreal, Canada Research-Professor, University of Montreal Hospitals-Clinics Research Centre (CHUM) Director of the PRONUSTIC Research Laboratory (URL: www.pronustic.umontreal.ca) Paper presented at the Seminar on Family Networks and Population Ageing, Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development, UNFPA and Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, Doha (Qatar), 3-4 June 2009.

2. Four questions I. What are the main features of population ageing in Africa, with an eye on intergenerational transfers? II. What do we know about the nature, mode and determinants of intergenerational transfers in relation to older persons in Africa? III. What are the policies and programs that have been implemented on intergenerational transfers targeted at the elderly in Africa and how effective have they been? IV. What is the way forward?

3. Methodology Studies of intergenerational transfers and population ageing have been approached from different theoretical, methodological, disciplinary and substantive perspectives in both animal and human species, including life sciences, biomedical sciences, and social sciences. Review of qualitative and quantitative studies on Africa through Medline, MUSE, Google Scholar, Dogpile databases and several other search engines in social, behavioural and biomedical sciences. Keywords and search terms: intergenerational transfer, intergenerational relations, intergenerational solidarity, patterns of exchange in kinship systems, intergenerational family exchanges, family support networks, intergenerational help, relations between adult children and elderly parents, population ageing, Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. Intergenerational transfers of poverty/wealth/resources, downwards – from older to younger generations, and upwards – from younger to older persons, and across multiple generations in Africa.

4. Background African societies are known for their sense of intergenerational solidarity, with their complex and extended family structures, dynamic household configurations and various types of union (encompassing monogamous and polygamous marriages) found in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Overwhelming evidence from African countries that the nature, mode and type of intergenerational transfers and support networks remain strong although they have evolved over time and space with changes in socioeconomic and cultural environments, due to transformational, structural and idiosyncratic changes at the individual, family, commnity and national levels. 2007 Joint project of the United Nations Programme on Ageing and the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics considers changing family structures, intergenerational transfer systems and emergent family and institutional dynamics as one of its six major research priorities of policy-related “Research Agenda on Ageing for the 21st Century”. Intergenerational issues and concepts have been incorporated into international plans of actions for ageing populations, including the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (2002) following the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing (1982) is built upon the “society for all ages” concept and the intergenerational approach to policy.

5. I. What are the main features of population ageing in Africa, with an eye on intergenerational transfers? -- 1/2 Magnitude and speed of population ageing spanning a century from 1950 to 2050, for Africa and its regions (Northern, Southern, Western, Eastern and Middle Africa): Society relatively old = fraction of the population aged 65+ exceeds 8-10%: % of elderly people in Africa and sub-Saharan Africa but South Africa falls short by 2050; % in 2025 will be 8.1% for South Africa (and 9.3% by 2050) and 7.0% in Northern Africa (13.9% by 2050); Older population (60+) has grown faster than the total population in all regions of Africa, and the proportion of elderly relative to the rest of the population has increased considerably (from 5.3% in 1950 to a projected 10.0% by 2050). In 2025, the median age of the African population (21.8 years) will still be below the median age of the world population in 1950 (23.9 years). Total dependency ratio (<15+65+/15-64) -- at best a rough estimate of the actual dependency burden in a society – used to capture potential social support needs: in Africa, decline from 82.5% in 1950 to 80.2% in 2007 and 54.7% projected in 2050. Old-age dependency ratio (65+/15-64) in Africa: increase from 5.9% in 1950 to 6.2% in 2007 and projected at 10.3% by 2050.

6. I. What are the main features of population ageing in Africa, with an eye on intergenerational transfers? -- 2/2 Potential support ratio (15-64/65+) significant for linking intergenerational transfers and population ageing, indicates how many potential workers there are per older person -- general trends in all African regions as population ages, its value falls: from 16.9% in 1950 to projected 13.9% in 2025 and 9.7% in 2050 (from 16.0% in 1950 to 4.7% by 2050 for Northern Africa). Indicate an increasing number of elderly in need of support to be supported by a relatively smaller number of persons of working age. Parent support ratio (85+/50-64), provides an indication of the overall demand on families to provide support for their oldest members: increase of this ratio for Africa (from 0.9% in 1950 to 1.6% in 2007 and 3.3% by 2050) and its regions implies that increasingly adult children (aged 50 to 64) will find themselves responsible for the care of 1+ family members aged 85+. These shifting weights of the various age groups tend to create social and political pressures that may result in changing patterns of resource allocation among generations, competition for scarce resources among family members that sometimes give rise to intergenerational conflicts. Over the next four decades, the gains for Africa are even more important: life expectancy at age 60 is expected to increase from 16.6 years in 2005-2010 to 19.5 years in 2045-2050 (a 17 per cent gain); from 13.3 to 15.8 years (by 19 per cent) at age 65, and from 5.8 to 7.0 years (by 21 per cent) at age 80. Complex challenges of an ageing population concurrently with young age structures.

7. II. What do we know about the nature, mode and determinants of intergenerational transfers in relation to policy for the elderly in Africa?

8. III. What are the policies and programs that have been implemented on intergenerational transfers targeted at the elderly in Africa and how effective have they been? Intergenerational contract is essentially an inherent way of living in Africa. Many African countries have attempted to address the need of older persons in various degrees: in the majority of countries, the ‘modern’ state-run systems consist almost entirely of contributory social security regimes for formal (public or private) sector workers. Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) Programme (2008+): enrolled only 42% of the targeted population and risk not reaching the poor (Sultan & Schrofer, 2008). An overview of Social Security reform issues in Africa, based on the examination of a number of case studies for both Francophone and Anglophone Africa, revealed a number of findings drawn by the analysis of case studies (Barbone and Sanchez, 1999): with very few exceptions (Mauritius, Botswana, and to a certain extent South Africa), formal social security institutions have not been successful in providing broad-based coverage of the population. Recent review of social pensions for the elderly in 15 African countries (intergenerational poverty reductions policies): unlikely that pensions and disability coverage will be extended to the informal sector, which represents the vast majority of the employed population in Africa within the next generation (Kakwani and Subbarao, 2005). At the household level, there is ample evidence showing that cash transfers improve food security and nutrition. In Lesotho for instance, the number of old age pensioners reporting that they never went hungry increased from 19% before the pension to 48% after it was introduced (Vincent and Cull, 2009). Fiscal cost of providing an universal non-contributory social pension to all of the elderly is prohibitive/unaffordable– hence, need for a targeted social pension to groups most in need.

9. IV. What is the way forward? Need to incorporate indigenous structures in donor, government and NGO activities remains one of the challenges of empowering the African family in the intergenerational transfers as population ages in Africa. The limited resources of African governments in the face of multiple demands and priorities across all ages from infancy to old age, signifies assistance from international institutions in delivering social welfare in the continent is critical. Such assistance should be disciplined into a cohesive welfare policy to correctly address local problems with affordable and evidence-based local solutions that are immune of the limitations of many imported policies from Western societies. The economic development of Africa needs a more detailed and systematic policy thinking on social welfare needs for individuals, families and communities within countries. The benefits of traditional welfare arrangements should be identified and efforts made to provide the complementary public support which can maintain and support these. That the family, even the African family, can provide all the social welfare needs of the society to its members is surely a myth; that it provides the central structure of social welfare in an African context is surely a truth under conditions of well-designed policies which support the African family in its various shapes and types to work in solidarity with the governments, NGOs and civil society to foster health-enhancing living conditions in communities for all in the society.

10. Thank you for your attention...