Beth Guthrie had grown comfortable in her “sort of crappy” but respectable one-bedroom apartment with a balcony overlooking the forests of Toronto’s High Park.
Like many older women, she spent her prime working years at home, raising children and running the household. Divorced at 40, Guthrie began working as a librarian, but the late start meant payments from her workplace and public pensions would never be enough.
Living alone, with rent rising, Guthrie’s retirement increasingly focused on money instead of socializing and books. She realized that the cost of rent would soon overtake her pensions.
This precarity is in no small part due to the gender pension gap, the difference between men’s and women’s retirement income that is now starting to get attention from government researchers and advocates for women.
A lifeline on St. Clair Ave W.
Those most affected are often single, divorced or widowed. They have no one with whom to share the costs of living. It can especially impact older women, who, like Guthrie, stayed home to raise children and later earned less than men, leading to a lower retirement income.
This wage gap is slowly closing but Canada’s gender pension gap hasn’t improved since 1976 when it was first comprehensively measured, said a recent report by the Pay Equity Office of Ontario.
Retirement earnings include private workplace pensions and savings, along with the public Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, and for those on a very low income, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. These improvements are recognized internationally for their success, the PEO report said, but “not all Canadians benefit equally from this system.”
The gender pension gap leaves Canadian women with 17 per cent less earnings than men, according to the PEO’s calculation, although other measurements say the gap is wider.
In 2018, Guthrie, then 74, put her name on a wait-list for affordable housing in a St. Clair Avenue West building for older adults.
With a mix of market and subsidized rent, St. Matthew’s Bracondale House offers social programs and provincially funded home care for those needing help with laundry, dressing, bathing or medication.
Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said older women are being priced out of the rental market, and without housing and support services, many will end up in institutions.
R.J. Johnston Toronto Star
Without affordable rent mixed with health and social supports, many women will live in financial stress, a diminished existence that can lead to extreme loneliness and isolation, both of which heighten the risk of depression or dementia.
“That’s why it’s important to think about proactive solutions that can allow people to thrive in their communities, in less costly ways to all of us,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, a leading Canadian geriatrician and director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Cheaper rent, lower utilities cost and her savings protected
Guthrie waited and worried as she dipped into her shrinking savings. In 2023, she got the call. A one-bedroom suite was available.
“I was starting to think my life was going to be completely unaffordable, and now,” she said, pausing, “I don’t have to worry about money.”
At her new home at Bracondale House, Guthrie saves $600 a month on rent, doesn’t pay extra for utilities and, no longer has to withdraw money from her savings account.
Bracondale was built in the 1980s when federal and provincial governments routinely subsidized the construction of affordable housing for older adults and people of all ages.
Bracondale now offers home care services to older men and women, with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health. Its low-cost social programs, such as chair yoga, painting or “singing for joy,” are funded by the Ministry of Seniors and Accessibility and the City of Toronto. It also gets grant money from family foundations, such as the Norman and Margaret Jewison Foundation.
Older women are being priced out of the rental market, and without housing and support services, many will end up in institutions, Sinha said.
“Ultimately, their choice becomes the shelter, it becomes the nursing home, or it becomes living in a hospital,” he added.
Ontario builds more nursing homes, but is that the answer?
As Ontario braces for a massive aging demographic, it has touted its plan to spend $6.4 billion on the construction of new nursing homes with 31,000 beds and the renovation of existing homes with 28,000 beds.
But in America, governments are taking the opposite approach — and the budget decisions made by officials there increasingly provide low-income earners with home care such as housekeeping, grocery shopping, meal preparation or transportation. These are the types of services that, in Ontario, could help women like Guthrie who don’t need a nursing home.
In the U.S., where the gender pension gap is estimated at more than 30 per cent, many financially struggling women could not otherwise afford such home care supports.
In the United States, Medicaid spending on nursing homes is declining while funding to home and community services has jumped, according to data cited by Robert Applebaum, a scholar at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University.
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National spending on home care and community services by Medicaid — health insurance for those on a low income — has jumped dramatically over 20 years, replacing funds once dedicated to nursing homes, said Robert Applebaum, Senior Research Scholar, Scripps Gerontology Center, Miami University in Ohio.
In 2001, Medicaid spent 71 per cent of its long-term care funds on nursing homes and two decades later, in 2021, that number had declined to 37 per cent, Applebaum said.
In the same period, Medicaid funding to home and community services jumped from 29 per cent to 63 per cent, he said.
In some states, nursing homes have empty beds as older Americans get the support they need — and repeatedly say they want — in the community, he said. Nursing homes increasingly care for residents who have no family caregivers and need 24-hour-a-day support or have significant dementia, Applebaum said.
In Canada, more government-funded home care could help older people stay healthier in the community, Sinha said.
Challenge issued to Premier Ford
Sinha said he told last summer’s Halifax gathering of Canadian premiers — including Ontario Premier Doug Ford — that they are more interested in nursing home photo opportunities than solving the health care challenges of a fast-aging demographic.
“I said, ‘I think you guys are just addicted to cutting ribbons in front of big buildings. It makes you feel good, because you feel like you’re doing something.’
“‘But I have a solution for you: double your home-care budgets. Then you’ll have thousands and thousands of individual homes where you can literally take a ribbon, put it across the doorway of Mrs. Jones or Mr. Smith and stand with them because they’ll be really happy that you’re helping them stay in their own home.’”
In 2024-2025, Ontario will spend $9.2 billion on nursing homes — more than double the $4.3 billion it gives to home care for all ages, although province’s budget last spring promised another $2 billion over the next three years. It’s a commitment that Ford’s office underscored when asked to comment on this article.
The Ministry of Health said the province has added nearly 25,000 front-line personal support care workers. Critics, however, say the PSWs, who are mostly female and racialized, still don’t get paid enough to ensure they will stay in those jobs.
The ministry said the government is “taking action to provide more people with the right care, in the right place, at every stage of life.”
For a group of fortunate older adults in a Halton Region pilot project called the Community Wellness Hub at 410 John St. in Burlington, the right care in the right place has been an affordable housing unit with communal programs focused on health and social connections. The results caught the attention of researchers with residents experiencing 14 per cent fewer non-urgent emergency department visits along with fewer and shorter hospitalizations for chronic conditions such as diabetes or heart failure. While the pilot project is spreading in Halton Region, for now only a lucky few live in such homes.
Working out, playing bridge and socializing at the coffee shop
In Toronto Guthrie now has a built-in social life and the comfort of knowing that if she ever needs extra help with bathing, medication or navigating Ontario’s complex health care system, it is all offered on-site.
“It’s just such a relief,” she said, “because I know people who had so much trouble figuring out how to get that help.”
“I was starting to think my life was going to be completely unaffordable,” said Beth Guthrie. “Now, I don’t have to worry about money.”
Richard Lautens Toronto Star
Now 80, Guthrie just started getting a twice-a-month visit from a worker who launders her bedding and fits the bottom sheet on her mattress. She attends fitness classes for bone health and plays bridge with a fellow resident who, Guthrie says, is a certified bridge teacher.
When she walks to the local coffee shop, Guthrie often stops for a chat with people she recognizes from her fitness class.
“I go out on the street and I always meet somebody I know,” she said.
Social connections make a difference in well-being, particularly for older women who often live alone, said Dr. Paula Rochon, a geriatrician and founder of Women’s Age Lab at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. On average, Canadian women outlive men by four years, according to Statistics Canada.
In an October article published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Rochon and her team called for a re-evaluation of traditional housing models to address the poverty and loneliness of older adults, particularly women, citing the benefits of subsidized housing, shared housing or Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs), all with the built-in supports.
Growing calls to fix the pension gap
As calls for more housing options grow, there are new demands for changes to the Canada Pension Plan. (CPP)
Workplace and public pensions are based on salary contributions made over decades. It requires roughly 40 years at an average salary to get a full CPP payment.
Canada’s public and workplace pension models were designed decades ago to reflect “male pattern employment,” which effectively punishes women who shoulder the care of families, said the Ontario Pay Equity Office report, called Understanding the Gender Pension Gap in Canada.
The PEO report cited ways to lessen the pension gap. While closing the wage gap would help, it still wouldn’t compensate for the time away from work due to family responsibilities, said the report, written by Elizabeth Shilton, a legal scholar who practiced labour, employment and pension law for 25 years.
The CPP could reduce the number of years an individual must work (roughly 40) in order to qualify for full pension benefits, Shilton’s report said.
Canada’s pension models were designed decades ago to reflect “male pattern employment,” which effectively punishes women who shoulder the care of families, said an Ontario Pay Equity Office report written by legal scholar Elizabeth Shilton.
Michelle Mengsu Chang Toronto St
It also said the CPP could fast-track its plan for a slight increase in pension payments. Without change to the timeline, that increase will not be fully realized until 2059 when the 40-year career of a young worker today is complete.
It has been a long time since Guthrie earned a wage while working on the library reference desk, a job that gave her a second start in life, after her marriage ended.
Now, Bracondale House, with its book clubs and bridge games, is giving Guthrie another shot at life anew, this time without the stress of money.
“It’s a relief,” she said. “It’s such a relief.”
This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The Silver Century Foundation.
