Sources: http://hdr.undp.orgorenorcountries (HDI); https://data.worldbank.orgorindicat//sp.dyn.le00.in (Life expectancy); https://data.worldbank.orgorindicat//SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS?view=map (% of over 65s)
As you read through the book, no doubt you will refer back to this table to check life expectancies, and to wonder why certain issues such as gender inequality, diversity, or lack of adequate care might produce a lower life expectancy or a smaller population of over 65s.
Box 1.3: When does old age begin?
Alert readers will, by now, have noticed that we are referring to older people inconsistently. Sometimes we refer those who are 50 years or over as older people, at other times it is over 60 or over 65. People aged 80 or over are often referred to as if they belong to a separate category. The question of when old age begins depends on which population you are referring to. In Sub-Saharan Africa, old age begins in your thirties, or not at all, as a relatively high proportion of the population never makes it to adulthood, never mind old age. The answer to the question of when old age begins also depends on who you ask. Life scientists who study senescence (the biological decline associated with old age) will say that old age begins once a human being has moved beyond their reproductive years. So, for much of the wealthy industrialised world, this is aged 50 or over. For policy makers, age tends to be used as a means by which it is decided whether someone qualifies for a benefit. The most important benefit for older people is the state pension. It is so important in the UK context that retired or older people are generally referred to as ‘pensioners’. As the pension age has (up until very recently) been set at 65, for policy scholars in UK and European countries more generally, 65 is the age at which old age begins.
Myths and facts about population ageing
One of the great things about studying population ageing is that, while it is a relatively new phenomenon, the scale and size of the ‘longevity revolution’ (Butler, 2004) means that there have been major investments in research in the area. From the perspective of social scientists, the most important studies are longitudinal. Longitudinal studies are long-term programmes in which researchers find a group of people who are willing to be poked, prodded, questioned and analysed, not just once in a lifetime, but once every two to five years. Longitudinal studies are viewed as the gold standard in