Aging in Rural New York

Grey Gold

Nina Glasgow and David Brown of Cornell University’s Community and Rural Development Institute found that most of the 10% of Americans over 60 who migrated between 1995 and 2000 moved to rural communities, called rural retirement destinations (RRD).  Older migrants are “young-old”, between 60 and 4, have more education and higher incomes than the long-term elderly in rural areas. "They have a positive impact on the real estate market and on construction, provide financial and technical assistance to a wide array of civic needs, volunteer in a diverse set of activities, and they invigorate the arts and cultural scene," write the researchers.

In-migrants, however, reduce the supply of affordable housing, their volunteer activities can reduce the demand for paid professional workers, and over the long term, increase demand for health and social services.  They also compete for power with traditional leaders, creating tension in local affairs. "So far, our findings indicate that they are not moving elsewhere," said Glasgow, "and we found that 30 percent of in-migrants have adult children living nearby, “higher than the norm.

2007 New York Rural Aging Summit

The 2007 New York Rural Aging summit at Cornell University identified six critical issues facing rural elders, who represent 18% of the state’s rural population:  employment and training for themselves; volunteer opportunities; lack of health and social service workers; gaps in public transportation; poor technology infrastructure, and the fragmentation and inflexibility of Sate funding sources.  As shown in the map at right, 43 New York’s 53 counties are rural, and of these, 36 had a median age above the state average of 35.9.  Like the Adirondacks, almost half had lost population between 2000 and 2006, had lower household incomes in all age groups than the state as a whole, and had higher rates of elder poverty.

The summit proposed recommendations for policy in six areas:

Economic security and income - provide training and incentives to hire older adults;

Transportation and information access - seniors on school buses, increased funding to match population growth, incentives (update NYS laws), trip-specific transportation, connect to housing and land use planning; E-Z pass equivalent) and telecommunications (public-private investment partnerships;

Social services - coordination, increase flexibility of state funding to enable aging in place, continuing education for staff in working with older adults;

Health promotion and services - incentives for providers, early training and career development in high school and BOCES, payments while training, increased pay, county offices of aging funded to evaluate and coordinate service needs for health promotion, disease management, prevention; universal health coverage, neighbors/volunteers to help access care, telemedicine and other high tech innovations;

Informal care - share successful models, develop new models, share best practices);

Long term care - reduce funding fragmentation, flexible funding and regulation, expand transitional living services, re-implement geriatric mobile teams, increase and enhance services to low income, Medicaid-eligible elders, increase supply of health care workers.