Population and Politics: Voodoo Demography, Population Aging, and Canadian Social Policy

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Zhao Jiang Brendan Watts Sociology 1020 576 Chapter 21: Population and Politics: Voodoo Demography, Population Aging, and Canadian Social Policy April 7, 2014 An Article Response to Population and Politics A Brief of the Article In the article, “Population and politics: voodoo demography, population aging, and Canadian social policy,” Ellen Gee interprets her opposition towards the popular notion that the senior citizens who were born in the years of baby boom have taken advantages of the society more than they deserve and created burden to the younger generations. In this article, the author demonstrates the fact that it is a trend to blame the social pressure on the baby boomers by providing many pieces of news and commentaries. And then, she claims that there are no substantial empirical evidences for this demography. To solve this mysterious burden upon the younger generations of taxpayers, the author offers three possible explanations for the unjust accusation towards the elder people. The first reason she provides is that the lack of pension funds. There have been pension funds that are supposed to take in the money paid by younger people and give the pensions to senior citizens. But the chain of fund is broken by the government. The government borrows the money from the pension funds and generally does not pay back. The second explanation is that the health care system of Canada is too costly, regardless of the age of population. And the final one is that even though there is an expensive health care system in Canada, the main part of the health care to elder people is largely provided by women from younger generations. And these female caregivers are not paid well by the government. (Gee, 2000) Evaluation of the Author’s Viewpoint Though the ideas of blaming elder citizens of this country as the burden of society prevail, and such explanation

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