The Politics of Positive Aging

Crăciun, Irina Catrinel

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14255-1_3

The Politics of Positive Aging

Irina Catrinel Crăciun^4,5

Chapter
First Online: 11 May 2019

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Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Aging ((Int. Perspect. Aging,volume 21))

Abstract

This chapter examines the politics of positive aging. It starts off by defining active aging and exploring how positive aging theories contributed to shaping aging policy . The chapter continues with an analysis of how active aging policy and images of aging are interlinked and how they evolved historically. It is argued that images of aging are not just theoretical constructs but play a significant role for aging policy development and implementation. Three examples are used to show how images of aging are used by policy : (1) the strategy used by the World Health Organization to support positive aging by encouraging behavior change at individual level, (2) the EU strategies applied to endorse institutional changes that can accommodate an increasing aging population, and (3) Germanies’ active aging policy agenda that actively promotes positive aging images.

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Department of Psychology, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Irina Catrinel Crăciun
Department of Qualitative Social and Educational Research, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Irina Catrinel Crăciun

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Crăciun, I.C. (2019). The Politics of Positive Aging. In: Positive Aging and Precarity. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14255-1_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14255-1_3
Published: 11 May 2019
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