Incomers and locals: length of residence and ageing in rural communities

Background: Concerns about the future provision of supports and services for older Australians are particularly pronounced in rural and regional areas with their older and faster ageing populations and rapid rate of cultural, social and economic change. There is an urgent need for a more nuanced understanding of how these changes in older rural/regional populations will impact on future policy and service planning. This paper looks at the ageing services implications of one such major change: the infl ux into rural and regional communities of older sea and tree-changers. Data: This paper draws on interview data from 143, mostly older, rural people collected in three studies across ten Tasmanian rural communities. Results: Differences between recent incomers and long-term residents with major implications for policy and services development, emerged strongly in all three studies. The smaller, more locally defi ned but deeply rooted and complex social linkages of longer term residents are more likely to provide strong local informal, especially kinship, support in ageing. On the other hand the wider, more diverse networks of incomers, combined with their better educational, fi nancial and cultural resources, and greater mobility, provide weaker local informal support structures but more options for fi nding alternate services and supports. Longer term residents display a stoic acceptance and self suffi ciency that is less obvious among incomers. Although both groups profess a strong attachment to place and notions of community, that of incomers has a more theoretical, aesthetic and aspirational tone compared to the very grounded ‘warts and all’ attachment of long term residents. Conclusion: Incomers may or may not elect to age in place but, if they do, they are likely to present a very different scenario in terms of services expectations and requirements compared to the relatively undemanding formal services expectations of long term residents.