According to ‘conventional wisdom’ older people are now relatively well off and, as a result, many are in a position to pay for their own care and housing needs in old age. In reviewing the evidence for this latter proposition the article provides a brief overview for the UK population and the implications of an ageing society for the care services. A summary of the main sources of income available to older people is undertaken, including home ownership and ways of releasing equity which might be employed to generate extra income. On the basis that it is also important to match information about financial resources available to older people to the cost of different services, the article reviews the likely costs of residential and nursing home care and the little that is known about the costs of domiciliary services. In short, the article presents a summary of the relevant background information and examines the issue of whether elderly people could (but not necessarily ‘should’) finance their housing and care needs in old age.

Profiles of customary physical activity (CPA) and psychological wellbeing were obtained from a random community sample of 1,042 individuals aged 65 years and over. Activities were assessed with regard to their estimated minimum energy cost and/or their assumed contribution to functional capacity. The structure of CPA, and associations between activity levels, morale and mental health were then investigated. Women and men showed clear differences in the organisation of their activity patterns, and these differences were reflected in activity–affect relationships. For men, factor scores derived from the first principal component of CPA emerged as significant, though modest, predictors of well-being in regression and discriminant analyses. For women, however, activity factor scores failed significantly to predict levels of morale or mental health when medical and demographic factors were controlled. The results indicate that, among the present cohort of retired and elderly people, relationships between customary physical activity levels and psychological well-being are weak, indirect and gender-specific.

Theoretical approaches to conceptualising the notion of generativity have been psychologically or psychosocially based and assume generativity to be a universal phenomenon. Because psychological issues are subsumed within a cultural context, we suggest that generativity is not a universal psychological principle but rather a cultural construct. In this paper we argue that generativity must be analysed as a product of American culture and its embeddedness in individualism. Through an analysis of ethnographically based interviews with 161 older women we illustrate how generative behaviour is inextricably tied to a constellation of American beliefs about the nature of the self, the meaning of death, and attempts to attain immortality that are informed by the ideology of individualism.

The Hughes Hall Project for Later Life screened all people aged 75 years and over on the lists of seven general practices in Cambridge in order to identify those who were suffering from dementia. Of those living at home, it was found that 40% were being cared for primarily by husbands or wives, most of whom were themselves over the age of 75. In this paper we describe a group of 34 married couples in which one partner was diagnosed as demented. We suggest that for the nondernenting partner, the experience of caring differs in important respects from that of the more typical carer – usually younger and female – described in much of the research literature.

Comments made by a UK Government minister in 1989 concerning poverty, or rather the lack of it, amongst elderly people once again reflected the idea that the majority are well-off and less in need of State support than was the case in the past. The idea of a new group of Woopies (well off older persons) has been used as justification for debate about the introduction of means-testing for certain benefits directed at the elderly population. This paper challenges that view. It traces the evolution of the Woopie using published data and then examines the socio-economic characteristics of such a group. In a series of logit estimates to determine what factors are of importance in determining ‘Woopie status’, unsurprisingly receipt of income from assets and from an occupational pension are the most significant variables. Finally the scope for policy changes is examined.