How inclusive are housing designs in ageing England?

Abstract

As the majority of health and safety risks occur at home, this paper focuses on inclusive home environment design for older people in ageing England. The 2012 English Housing survey has been used to answer the key research questions: What is the impact of the ageing demographic transition on housing characteristics? Do older people live in homes that pose a risk to their health and safety? To what extent does household adaptation depend on the age of the household members? The final analysis is based on household dataset to take into consideration household attributes and home environment with a sample size of 14,386 households. The key findings show that the majority of older people live in houses that have two levels with substantial risks. Only a small section of households have addressed the risks and made adaptations. Moreover, it is likely that some older people change their dwelling type from a two level household to a bungalow or flat in later life to address the risks associated with falls. 45% to 54% of older people aged 70-79 and 80 and above compared to only 34% of older people aged 60-69 live in flats and bungalows. Approximately 40% to 47% of older people aged 70 and above have moved during the last ten years to live in bungalows and flats. Hence, designers need to take into consideration the health and well-being of older people when designing homes in England to enable people to reside in the home they desire rather than moving to a new household type. Moreover, designers should consider risks of older people that continue dwelling in high risk households.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Shan Wang: orcid.org/0000-0002-3530-6232

ORCID for Yuanyuan Yin: orcid.org/0000-0002-2109-0135

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