Deciding what to include in a textbook is always difficult. It is important to be as comprehensive as possible, but restrictions in space and time mean that no book is truly so. Given these limitations, we chose broad themes. The result is nine chapters, each of which addresses a core area of social gerontology. In each chapter, we lean on seminal work to scope out the field, then update this with current publications and try wherever possible to include worked examples to illustrate how the policy plays out for older people and their families in real life. As stated in the Preface, much of the writing for this book took place in 2018–19. The COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding as we make our final changes to the proofs of the book and so only minor comments can be made on the implications of the pandemic for ageing societies. One thing we can say with some surety is that the pandemic throws a harsh light on the need for society and government to take greater account of the age and health profile of their population when planning where to spend public money.
In this first chapter we demonstrate how making the transition to an older population means that we will need to rethink many of the basic tenets of the welfare state. We outline how thinking and research on ageing populations are constantly developing, and how issues which seemed insurmountable in the past (for instance, gender inequality in life expectancy), have now been replaced with alternative challenges, such as the prevalence of dementia, or the need to improve standards of care in residential settings. We use a number of tools such as population pyramids to demonstrate this complexity and provide readers with an overview of population ageing around the globe. We conclude that the problem is not ageing itself, it is that we use age to structure social, economic, and political life in a way that is neither efficient nor effective (Carney and Gray, 2015).
Chapter 2, ‘The ageist zeitgeist’, takes up the baton of this problematic approach to thinking about chronological age by addressing the challenge of combating ageism – one of the most pervasive and harmful forms of discrimination. We explain how attitudes and behaviours are interlinked and how socio-cultural norms reinforce what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
One of the ways in which ageism perpetuates is through the use of age as a structural barrier to accessing employment and education. We explore some of these issues in Chapter 3, ‘Retirement, active ageing and working longer’. By asking whether retirement is becoming a thing of the past, we examine alternatives such as extended working lives and opportunities for new careers in business or trade. We conclude that active ageing, the core policy in this area for ageing societies since the 1990s, is problematic when it is operationalised within the context of high levels of inequality. As levels of inequality continue to increase, active ageing has become maligned in some circles, and is now often regarded as merely an aspiration for well-off older people rather than a workable policy for ageing societies.
As Chapter 3 reports, most people have little say about when they retire. Quite often retirement is the result of redundancy or ill health. For these reasons, in Chapter 4 we take up the theme of care for older people. We note that most carers of older people are spouses or older adult offspring, who are aged 60 or over themselves. While we note the physiological changes that accompany normal ageing, we frame this as just one of many stages of possible dependency experienced across the lifecourse, from birth to death (Fineman, 2005).
Rights are taken up again in Chapter 5 when we discuss ‘Diversity among the ageing population’. Chronological age is a pretty spurious basis on which to place people into one group or ‘minority’ and so it is hardly surprising that diversity among older people is significant. In this chapter, rather than offering a superficial overview of everything from gender to racial discrimination, we choose to focus on LGBTQI* rights as a means of exploring the process of ageing through a period when gay men’s lives transformed from being criminalised to gaining equal rights.
As gender discrimination shapes every aspect of ageing across the lifecourse, we have dedicated Chapter 6 to examining how age and gender intersect to produce different experiences of ageing for men and women. We address important questions such as gender differences in old age and how policies affect older women. We finish with a section on masculinity and ageing, concluding that there are particular challenges for men in old age.
In Chapter 7, we move from the discussion of age discrimination to solidarity between generations, one of the most valuable forms of social solidarity in ageing societies. The chapter elaborates on some core concepts, such as ‘generation’ and ‘birth cohort’, explaining how each is related but distinct. The chapter goes on to discuss how some governments, who wish to remove socio-economic rights supported through the welfare state, have attempted to erode solidarity between generations by promoting regressive politics of generational equity which have little foundation in researched evidence.
The fact that public discourse about ageing has been ‘ceded to political activists, pundits and journalists, leading often to exaggerated or garbled interpretation’ (Teitelbaum, 2015: S87) is explored in Chapter 8, ‘Politics of ageing’. By asking why older people vote and younger people protest, we investigate how political participation changes across the lifecourse. We conclude that narrowing the gap between public perception of what it means to live in an ageing society and research evidence about population ageing is going to be key in making a peaceful transition to a new, older, electorate.
In Chapter 9, we take up the challenge of ageism, naïve media interpretation and low levels of public understanding of ageing through the lens of cultural gerontology. We explore how the cultural turn has expanded and enhanced our understanding of what it means to live a long life. Through themes of embodiment and identity, and by exploring cultural critiques of the biomedical model, we show how a deeper and more culturally connected understanding of ageing can enrich this stage of the human lifecourse for everyone.
Chapter 10, the final substantive chapter of the book, pulls together all of the core concepts and information from each chapter under broad headings and themes such as political economy of ageing, and post-structuralism. In this chapter, we also lay out a range of possible research questions and areas for further research, which students may decide to pursue at postgraduate level. We conclude with some critical questions for graduates around how they can have a positive influence on ageing societies.
Chapter 11 is dedicated to helping you consolidate what you have learned. We do this through a series of multiple-choice questions. You can dip into this chapter as soon as you have finished working on a particular topic, or you can wait until you have finished the whole book and use these exercises to test your level of knowledge with an end of term quiz. Either way, you will be surprised by how much you now know about human ageing and the policy challenges it poses for ageing societies.
An online resource of questions and exercises is also available at https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/critical-questions-for-ageing-societies/online-resources
As this is a textbook, we worked hard to make it a useful and easy-to-read introduction for anyone interested in the social implications of ageing. To this end, we have added an extensive glossary of key terms which we hope will accelerate your education on ageing.
Let’s begin by addressing the first question that students ask in class; why are there more older people around now than in the past? Or, to put it more directly, what is population ageing?
Population