Populations around the globe are ageing rapidly. This demographic shift affects families, market structures and social provisions. This timely volume, part of the Ageing and the Lifecourse series, argues that the lifecourse perspective helps us understand the causes and effects of population ageing. The lifecourse perspective suggests that individuals’ experiences at an early age can influence their decisions and behaviour at a later age. This much-needed volume combines insights from different disciplines and real-life experiences to describe the theories and practices behind this idea. It therefore caters to the needs of scholars, practitioners and policy makers in a range of areas including sociology and political science.
1 1 What is population ageing? (Demography) Many people are afraid of aging … much of the negative attitude is generated by a set of myths about individual and population aging that are not backed and often squarely contradicted by evidence. (Axel Börsch-Supan, 2013: 3) Introduction If you are reading this book, chances are that you have signed up for a course in ageing studies or social gerontology, which is a sub-set of gerontology – the study of human ageing. Or, perhaps, you are working with older people and would like to know more about social policy
Over the next 40 years the number of people aged 60+ in the world, many of whom live in developing regions, will grow by 1¼ billion. What will old age be like for them?
This original book provides an analysis of links between development, population ageing and older people, challenging some widely held misconceptions. It highlights the complexity of international experiences and argues that the effects of population ageing on development are influenced by policy choices.
The book will be of interest to a range of academic disciplines, including economics, gerontology, social policy and development studies as well as policy-makers and practitioners concerned with developing countries.
population growth means that, in absolute terms, the number of Ethiopians aged 60 or more is projected to rise from around 900,000 to over 12 million. the causes of population ageing Why is the world’s population ageing, and why do the above trends vary across different countries? These questions can be answered on a number of different levels, including: table 1.4: Population aged 60 years or more, selected countries (% of the total population) 1950 2000 2025* 2050* UK 15.5 20.8 25.8 28.8 Russia 9.2 18.4 24.3 31.7 China 7.5 10.0 19.6 31.1 Brazil 4.9 8.1 16.5 29
23 TWO Population ageing and international migration This chapter aims to introduce ethnicity scholars to the societal challenge that is population ageing, and social gerontologists to the challenges that are posed by the globalisation of international migration and by transnationalism. The idea is that both fields of scholarship will gain insight into what has been written in each field about the challenge that lies closest to their expertise and what makes the intersection of ethnicity and old age an interesting angle of investigation for their fields
91 FOUR Population ageing and health introduction Experiences of health and illness are central to older people’s wellbeing and influence how population ageing affects development. Good health may enable older people to continue in employment, facilitate their social networks and enhance their economic and emotional resilience. An old age characterised by high rates of disease and illness increases the potential economic and social ‘burden’ of older people and reduces their quality of life. While the risk of some diseases increases with old age, overall
There is a new spectre haunting Europe, the OECD and, if the World Bank is to be believed, the world as a whole - the spectre of an ageing population! For national economic policy-makers and their international agencies, population ageing has many of the characteristics of a moral panic. The World Bank (1994) talks of ‘the old age crisis’ and the OECD Secretariat (1996) of ‘a critical policy challenge’. Some refer to the aged as a ‘selfish generation’ (Thomson 1991) and invoke the notion of increasing conflict between younger and older generations over welfare resources. Others note that whatever problems loom in the short to medium-term can only get worse as the fertility rates of many Western nations go into free-fall. National treasuries, irrespective of country-specific demographics, use the supposedly ineluctable consequences of a ‘greying’ population as a mantra to be invoked against all proposals for enhanced public spending. New commitments are out of the question, when existing commitments to the old (and those who will become old) promise national ruin in a matter of decades. While some scholars and a few agencies of government provide a more measured analysis of national trends, their voices are, almost invariably, drowned by the clamour of those who argue that population ageing means that the modem welfare state can no longer pay its way.
Many of these views have some surface plausibility. The world’s population is ageing and that of the OECD countries in particular. It is estimated that between 2000 and 2030 AD, the OECD’s elderly population (aged 65 and over) will increase by 61.
139 EIGHT pension systems and the challenge of population ageing: what does the public think? Dina Frommert, Dirk Hofäcker, Thorsten Heien and Hans-Jürgen Andreß introduction Over the coming decades, population ageing is set to affect all European countries, probably resulting in a doubling of the ratio of pensioners to the working population within the next 50 years. At the same time, many European countries have until very recently experienced a significant decline in the employment participation of their older workforce, indicating a general trend
, inevitably lead to population ageing and have tremendous consequences for the lifecourse of individuals. In this chapter, we describe population dynamics and explain how they lead to population ageing, illustrating the complex and varying means by which populations age. We then discuss the consequences for the individual lifecourse, and we offer suggestions for incorporating demographic reasoning into micro-level lifecourse research. Population dynamics Population size is influenced by three factors: births into the population, deaths out of the population, and net
As the drive towards creating age-friendly cities grows, this important book provides a comprehensive survey of theories and policies aimed at improving the quality of life of older people living in urban areas.
In this book, part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, leading international researchers critically assess the problems and the potential of designing age-friendly environments. The book considers the different ways in which cities are responding to population ageing, the different strategies for developing age-friendly communities, and the extent to which older people themselves can be involved in the co-production of age-friendly policies and practices.
The book includes a manifesto for the age-friendly movement, focused around tackling social inequality and promoting community empowerment.
