Projection of the siblings of the elderly using a demographic kinship theory and the LifePaths microsimulation model

Population aging is a challenge that will eventually affect most countries. Canada, in particular, is facing a faster population aging than any European country (Gaymu et al., CJA 2010). This is means that the number of Canadian elderly with disability and the number of elderly needing assistance will also increase more rapidly. In a context of limited resources, Canada might have to take benefit of the informal network to take care of all those elderly people.

In this paper, we use LifePaths, a microsimulation model developed at Statistics Canada, to improve our previous efforts in projecting the potential family network. To do this research, we modified the model presented in a demographic theory of kinship (Keyfitz and Caswell, 2005) for taking into account a longitudinal component and add the number of surviving siblings to the information that we already have on surviving spouse and children. It is also important to note that this new model can be use with any set of fertility and mortality rate for any country.