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Mobility of the Elderly

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Life-Oriented Behavioral Research for Urban Policy

Abstract

This chapter briefly overviews studies on mobility of the elderly with a particular focus on its conceptualization, measurement, and evaluation. The role of mobility in the everyday life of the elderly is first explored through putting mobility discourses into a broader context. After clarifying hierarchy of travel needs, interdependencies between mobility and other life domains, and the linkage between mobility and well-being are discussed. Then, policy aspects related to mobility of the elderly are examined, aiming to draw on the potential conflicts that exist among different perspectives including social welfare, economy, and urban planning. Finally, this chapter points out the needs for conducting further cross-cutting empirical studies, establishing a clearer linkage between conceptual framework and empirical framework, developing a simple and standardized method to collectively show the importance of social aspects of transport, and exploring the potential changes in the role or position of the elderly in future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The definition of “mobility” can vary across disciplines. For example, Urry (2000), a sociologist, uses mobility in a broader context: the movement of not only people, but also things, information, and ideas. In this chapter, the term mobility is used just to simply indicate the ability of the individual to travel.

  2. 2.

    Note that the reduction of travel needs may also be reflected in the statistics.

  3. 3.

    The term “functionings” is used in Sen’s (1985) work, where it means “what the person succeeds in doing with the commodities and characteristics at his or her command (p. 6)”, or simply “what he or she manages to do or to be (p. 7)”. Commodities will be used to achieve the functionings, while the achievement would be different across individuals even with the same bundle of commodities, since the ability to use the commodities are different.

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  1. Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan

    Makoto Chikaraishi

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Correspondence to Makoto Chikaraishi .

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  1. Hiroshima University , Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan

    Junyi Zhang

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Chikaraishi, M. (2017). Mobility of the Elderly. In: Zhang, J. (eds) Life-Oriented Behavioral Research for Urban Policy. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56472-0_10

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