Hayward, Lynda Mary2006-07-282006-07-2819981998http://hdl.handle.net/10012/311Population aging in Canada will create major local planning challenges in Ontario over the next few decades. Although there are a plethora of ways to integrate the elderly into local communities, many are contingent upon whether they will decide to age-in-place, make a local move, or migrate out of the community. The research objective of this dissertation has been two fold: to establish how life course (especially mid-life) patterns are related to residential mobility in later life: and to examine how this knowledge can contribute to the development of new style of planning for an aging population. Using a life course perspective on aging, it is argued that a number of inter-related life course trajectories, specifically residential history, social and family relations, socio-economic status, and health, influence the decision to move in later life, either directly or indirectly through their effect on earlier residential trajectories. On the basis of a review of the literature on the residential mobility of the elderly, several hypotheses were put forward concerning the relationships between these trajectories and residential mobility outcomes of interest to planners. These were tested using data on a sample of 1063 men studied over a period of 30 years - the Ontario Longitudinal Study of Aging. Multi-variate models were developed using survival analysis procedures, specifically Kaplan-Meyer survival curves and Cox proportional hazards models. The remarkable overall finding was that, although this was an analysis of a single birth cohort of Ontario men using mid-life measures of life course trajectories, most of the associations found in the three models were what the literature based on studies of elderly people of both genders would lead one to expect, with the exception of education. Recommendations with regard to future directions for research are discussed, in addition to the challenges associated with planning for an aging population, and the implications of this research for local planners in Ontario.application/pdf12835822 bytesapplication/pdfenCopyright: 1998, Hayward, Lynda Mary. All rights reserved.Harvested from Collections CanadaDoctoral Thesis