The Social Context of Ageing and Retirement

Abstract

That we live in an ageing society, with increasing numbers both of the wholly retired and the very elderly, can hardly have escaped the attention of anyone connected with the welfare state. The advent of such a society has, in the main, been greeted with considerable alarm. We hear of fears about the impact of an ‘age explosion’, and pessimism about the economic and social burden of large numbers of elderly people. The elderly have now achieved the status of a social problem, with their appearance in textbooks on deviancy and social control indicating a weakening in traditional preoccupations with youth.