Population Ageing and the ‘Problem’ of Care

Abstract

In almost every country of the Western world, the number and proportion of older people in the population has increased markedly over the past fifty years. As a result, later life has become a long and distinctive phase in the life course and the balance between young and old in family networks and in the population as a whole has shifted significantly. This considerable change in population age structures is a source of mounting public concern and alarm. In much everyday thought, later life is construed as a period of physical and mental decline, as burdensome to the families of ‘the old’ and as hateful to ‘the old’ themselves. In the political sphere, analyses of the ‘problem’ of resourcing the income, housing, health and welfare needs of an ageing population are permeated by phrases such as ‘the rising tide of the elderly’, ‘the growing burden of dependency’ and ‘the pension time-bomb’.