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Examines the supposed threat to the future trajectory of social spending posed by population ageing. An initial focus is on the contrast between the sense of crisis characterizing popular and governmental accounts with the more measured analysis of demographers and economists. Later sections examine a variety of welfare state programmes for the old and show that expenditure trajectories are only marginallyinfluenced by demographic considerations, but that what really influences expenditure outcomes is the differential generosity of pension provision in different families of nations. Differential generosity is also shown to be a further factor influencing aggregate patterns of social expenditure.

This chapter examines the major consequences, especially economic consequences, of population ageing. It shows that population ageing not only opens a demographic window for economic development by providing the first demographic dividend, but also has the potential to provide a second demographic dividend because changes in age structure influence the processes that lead to the creation of wealth. Such dividends could play a crucial part in China's future economic development.

Explores the themes of what follows. It argues that the welfare state literature of the past quarter century has been big on crisis theories of the welfare state and much weaker on facts. The chapter suggests that, in order to say something meaningful about the future of the welfare state, we need to test crisis accounts, such as those built around globalization and population ageing, with facts drawn from comparative analysis to establish which are myths and which are realities.

This is the third of three chapters on the sources of pressure on contemporary national welfare states, all of which seek to show how examining the sources of strain carries implications for identifying who is likely to fight with whom over what; the authors of the three chapters are not of one mind on this issue. Here, Pierson focuses on trends within affluent democracies that constitute potential sources of the strains usually attributed to globalization. Like Iversen in the previous chapter, he highlights the role of the shift from manufacturing to services, but rather than focusing on the disruption of employment, his concern is the shift in the workforce to activities where productivity improvements are more limited; the result has been slower economic growth, which generates fiscal strain for mature welfare states. This, for Pierson, is one of a series of ‘post‐industrial shifts’ that produce severe pressures on the welfare state — others include the maturation of governmental commitments, the transformation of household structures, and population ageing. All these shifts create intense fiscal problems; in addition, social change in a context where programmes are often slow to adapt generates mismatches between the inherited capacities of welfare states and contemporary demands for social provision.

Population ageing and the lives of older people are often framed by a number of stereotypes and generalisations. It is often misconstrued to be ‘problematic’ for development. However, given the complexity and diversity of development experiences, any claims about the effects of population ageing or experiences of later life must be based on firm, specific evidence. As will be evident in the succeeding chapters, the research study contends that population ageing must be seen as an integral part of development rather than an external threat to it, and that the processes of development are complex and highly variable, giving rise to diverse patterns of population change which lead to diverse experiences of later life.

Intergenerational tension and solidarity has been present in American family structures even before the Civil War. Kin ties remain transient and malleable. Americans still act as if they believe that they are part of one happy family, with many pretending to believe that blood is thicker than water. This chapter begins with a discussion on the history of the American family. It highlights developments that have altered the context in which general relations develop, and reviews some consequences of population ageing on domestic politics.

This chapter examines why chronic diseases have risen so markedly over the past several decades. It begins by assessing the contribution of individual risk factors to the disease burden. It then evaluates the social and environmental context of these risks using a theoretical framework that spans individual and population levels. It provides a series of case studies to illustrate the importance of major societal changes to population risks of chronic diseases, including political choices in Eastern Europe's transition from communism, the sudden wealth of the Western Pacific islands, and the periods of prolonged economic hardship experienced in Finland, Japan's ‘double-dip’ recession, and Cuba's ‘Special Period’. The chapter concludes by revisiting the leading population theories of health, health transition, risk factors, and population ageing, in the context of the societal determinants of health.

This chapter examines the availability and supportive functions of extended kin relationships in later life, drawing on the results of the Berlin Ageing study. It is shown that in addition to close family, distant relatives are an important resource of social functioning in later life. Extended kinship activation is associated with reduced risk of loneliness, regardless of whether relatives were involved in specific functional transactions.

With institutional and cultural improvisations facilitated by systems of law regarding custom and rights, Hong Kong has, over the century, absorbed different kinds of migrants and sojourners. The mobile populations have been driven by diverse individual and family strategies. The postwar years saw continuing ebbs and flows of people across Hong Kong's borders. This chapter uses census and other quantitative data to highlight the dramatic changes in the demographic landscape due to the massive population flows from China and discusses the implications for the territory's labor market and subsequent economic development. Hong Kong's population is ageing. The study shows that by 2011 the largest population age group will be those who have turned fifty. The chapter argues that in the absence of major policy changes, the best educated segment of Hong Kong by the year 2031 will be in one of the oldest age categories (55–59).

The study looks at the case of South Africa and pays particular attention to relationships between later life and race. The history of South Africa has been framed by issues of race and colonisation, and they continue to shape the country's experiences of population ageing until today. Its development was driven by the mining sector, which depended on large supplies of migrant African labour. This gave rise to divided families and complex patterns of social relations. The Apartheid system also formalized discrimination between racial groups, and as a result, experiences of later life vary profoundly across different racial groups. Population ageing is set in a wider context of fertility transition, as well as shifts in life expectancy, living arrangements and the impact of the AIDS epidemic. The chapter focuses on the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on older people, along with the effects of the country's extensive social pension programme.

Population ageing is a demographic phenomenon, which is often captured in population projections. Demographers make such projections based on a combination of fertility rates, mortality rates, and migration rates. These three pieces of information correspond to the life events of childbirth, death, and migration, which are structuring elements in life-courses. The present chapter draws on this connection between macro-level change and individual lives to illustrate that population ageing tells a story about life-courses.

One of the most significant phenomena of the twentieth century has been Population Ageing. This demographic phenomenon poses unique challenges to every society. The links between demography and the study of Ageing cannot but be overemphasised. Adequate, timely and reliable demographic data is essential for the formulation of policies and action programs for the elderly. Inspite of this, however, insofar as demographic studies are concerned, though a lot has been written on the subject, the Mediterranean Region has never been studied as a separate entity. The present study is an attempt to fill in the present lacuna. Although population ageing is a phenomenon prevalent in all the countries, the ageing of population varies in intensity from one country. In this paper, data pertaining to the 21 Mediterranean countries and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is collated under three separate topics namely: Determinants of population ageing,;Trends in Population ageing; and demographic characteristics of the elderly population

This chapter examines the contribution of the multi-disciplinary NDA Programme and outlines the new policy approach that is required to accompany the new scientific one advanced in this volume. It contends that that activity, in a wide variety of forms, is a key to well-being in later life. In order to highlight the potential of active ageing as a policy paradigm, as well as the risks of misrepresentation it entails, it discusses three parallel developments associated with population ageing. After examining the origins of active ageing, the chapter concludes by arguing that a new, more comprehensive approach to it would promote both citizenship and social inclusion.

Chapter 11 presents the results of alternative education scenarios using two approaches to measuring ageing, the conventional one based on chronological age and the recently developed approach that takes increasing life expectancy into account. Accordingly, this chapter presents conventional indicators of age structure, such as the proportion of the population above the age of 65, in comparison with new measures based on changing mortality conditions. The conventional ageing indicators lose some of their meaning when people live longer in good health. In contrast, the new view—reflected in the saying ‘70 is the new 60’—produces corresponding new indicators of population ageing, such as prospective median age and the proportion of the population with fewer than 15 years of remaining life expectancy. Based on these new indicators, population ageing over the twenty-first century is less rapid than according to the conventional ones.

Chapter 12 charts the evolution of the Age-Friendly Manchester programme and, more broadly, explores how the UK government’s ageing policies and strategies have developed since the late 1990s, highlighting four distinctive periods of nationally led activity relating to older people. It goes on to consider how the subsequent development of the age-friendly approach in Manchester has enabled a range of actors, notably local government agencies, to develop ageing programmes in the absence of national leadership. It discusses the City’s involvement in expanding its programme into an ambitious city-regional approach to age-friendly urban development, the first of its kind in the UK. The chapter demonstrates the potential for stimulating age-friendly initiatives at a local and regional level whilst at the same time highlighting the pressures facing urban authorities at a time of economic austerity.

Two sets of issues will become increasingly salient. The first part of the chapter discusses strategies to address population ageing, with heavy emphasis on two policies – increasing economic growth and raising the retirement age. The second part of the chapter discusses the possibility of pension design that is compatible with national and international labour mobility, fragmented family structures, and international competitive pressures. A particular question is whether it is possible to design pensions that have not only the advantages of defined‐contribution schemes (improved labour mobility) but also the advantages of defined‐benefit schemes (greater individual certainty).