Serving an ageing population: collaboration is key

ABSTRACT

As US society ages, pressures on local government planning and service delivery increase. We conducted a national survey of 1474 US local governments in 2013 to measure the range of services local governments provide and how these relate to local planning processes, public engagement and local government attitudes and motivators. We differentiate measures of public engagement and cross-agency collaboration, and control for built environment, demographic structure, socio-economics and metro status to explain what differentiates communities that provide more services. Our regression models find communities with more cross-agency collaboration (for service delivery, information and trust) and more engagement of older adults and families with children, provide more services to meet their needs. Capacity constraints do not differentiate level of service delivery. Local governments with conservative councils provide fewer services for children and seniors. Communities with increasing senior populations, and suburbs with increasing child populations provide fewer services targeted to their needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Local government
• ageing
• services
• cross-agency collaboration
• public participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The Planning Across Generation Survey data is proprietary. The County Business Patterns and American Community Survey are openly available via the US Census Bureau.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute for Food and Agriculture under Grant [2019-68006-29674].

Notes on contributors

Mildred E. Warner

Mildred E. Warner is Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Her research focuses on local government finance and service delivery, economic development, environmental policy, and new planning models to address the needs of children and seniors to promote community wellbeing and public health.

Xue Zhang

Xue Zhang is a post-doctoral associate in City and Regional Planning and Global Development at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. She is interested in age-friendly community development from an international perspective, sustainable development, equity, community development policy and public health.