Demographic Profile of Senior in Wayne County, Michigan

A more detailed look at the responses given to the disability questions allows for a better
understanding of the health conditions of seniors across the region. The correlation
between economic status and living arrangements with disability reporting is quite clear.
Communities with higher shares of low income seniors, and seniors living alone, come in
with higher rates of reported disabilities. These higher rates also translate to greater
numbers of seniors reporting the presence of more than one disability.
In all communities, persons responding with only one disability were most likely to
identify it as physical or related to going outside the home. Another common thread
across the vast majority of communities was the higher percentage of persons with
multiple disabilities not including self-care as one of them.
Educational Attainment and Language Usage
The final two demographic tables look at persons 65 years and over in terms of their
educational attainment and language usage. While educational attainment is an important
indicator of socioeconomic status and potential need, the relationship is not always clear
due to the fact that many of the area’s elderly were able to come to Detroit during the last
century and get good jobs in the auto plants with minimal education. Nevertheless,
educational attainment is an important indicator, and the lack of a high school diploma
can signal potential illiteracy. Language spoken at home and the ability to speak English
are quite important indicators for service providers. There continues to be a large
segment of immigrants from the mid-1900s who never learned English well, who are
being joined by recent immigrants with little English capability. Providers of aging
services need to know where these people live and develop procedures to reach them in
their language.
Table 20 shows a wide discrepancy in educational attainment across the communities.
While persons 65 years and over across the region reported a 63 percent high school
graduation rate, residents of Ecorse reported a rate of 41 percent (lowest among the 34
communities) while those in Grosse Ile and Northville townships reported rates of 85 and
83 percent, respectively. Inkster, Melvindale, River Rouge and Sumpter township all
reported rates of 50 percent or less, demonstrating that the correlation between education
(at least at the high school graduate level) and socioeconomic status is strong.
Table 21 summarizes data on the language that the elderly speak at home and, if it is
other than English, their perceived ability to speak English. Across the region, 87.5
percent of the residents reported speaking only English at home. However, in
communities such as Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, with their large numbers of Middle
Eastern residents, the share drops to 78 percent and more than 20 percent of the non
English-exclusive speakers report problems with speaking English at all. It is also worth
pointing out that there are other communities with high shares of English-only speakers,
which have high percentages of persons with difficulty speaking English. Examples of
such communities are Canton township, Southgate and Woodhaven.
The Senior Alliance will need to be aware of all the characteristics that have been
documented in this section to prioritize and plan the services that they deliver.
A Demographic Profile of Seniors in PSA 1-C 20