Aging and Changing Expectations of Support in Old Age: Some Lessons from a Rural Costa Rican Survey

Victor M. Gomez and Jeffrey B. Nugent

Abstract

Costa Rica will be the first country to go through a radical change in its age structure from a youth-oriented one to an aging one in Central America. Female life expectancy at birth in Costa Rica of 79 in 1997 was virtually equal to that of the United States of 80 and considerably higher than those of Mexico (75), El Salvador (72), Nicaragua (70), Honduras (69), and Guatemala (68). Having risen by a full ten years since 1970, it is clear that life expectancy has been rising rapidly and may be expected to continue to rise over the foreseeable future. At the same time, the total fertility rate has been declining quite steadily from over 6 in 1960 to 4.9 in 1970, 3.7 in 1980 and 2.7 in 1996. While the share of those over 60 in the population was a modest 6.4% in 1990, it is expected to rise to 14.3% in 2020 and 19.2% in 2030. The group that will be over 60 in 2020 or 2030 are already young adults. They will be caught in a squeeze inasmuch as they have to face more and more years of old age dependence but with fewer children and other young people to provide that support.

For those in urban areas of Costa Rica there are rapidly improving means of storing financial assets for use in old age and increasing number of jobs providing pension plans and social security. The problem would seem to be most serious in rural areas where insurance and pension coverage are much more limited and yet self-employment (a major source of own support) for elderly is declining in importance. Rural Costa Rican women are typically several years younger than their husbands at marriage, generally outlive their husbands and, when widowed or divorced, have greater difficulty remarrying than men, women are more vulnerable to this child support squeeze than men. For this reason, the present study focuses on the problem of old age support for rural Costa Rican women.

Relevant questions to be addressed in this paper are: (1) To what extent are these young rural women adjusting their labor force participation and other behavior to cope with the challenge. (2) How is their ability to adjust and to ensure other sources of support affected by education? (3) Does education of children help induce more support from children or does it undermine their loyalty? (4) What other determinants of support from adult children to their elderly parents are evident? (5) How do the observed patterns of behavior relate to changing attitudes and environmental conditions?

To answer these questions, this paper draws upon the results of a survey of both elderly and younger generation households in rural Costa Rica undertaken in the early 1990s under the auspices of the International Labor Office. The survey consisted of 1722 young wives and their families and 529 elderly women and their families, as well as community questionnaires, and focus group sessions with men and women from both age groups. The concentration on rural areas is intentional since in urban areas there are more alternative extrafamilial sources of old age support and care, such as means of accumulating financial and other assets for old age and community or institutional sources of care.

The present study is based on comparisons between generations of wives (and in some cases husbands) with respect to labor force participation by type, savings and accumulation, number of children and expectations of old age support. The patterns with respect to labor force participation, accumulation of real assets and children are described in Section II. Section III describes the extent, nature and patterns of support by adult children of their elderly parents and how these are affected by education. Section IV provides a more formal analysis of the determinants of support of the elderly by their children and relates these findings to the observed changes in attitudes and environmental conditions. Speculations about future changes are also provided.

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