Policymakers like to make use of age criteria, because they provide a transparent and seemingly objective standard. In reality, however, age limits are not as innocent as they appear: distinctions on the basis of age are often irrelevant and the actual age thresholds tend to be arbitrary. Age limits can also be criticised from a theoretical perspective: how can the heterogeneity of today's older people be reconciled with uniform age-defined classes? In response to a European Union Directive of 2000, Belgium implemented strict anti-discrimination legislation. This provides all the more reason to ascertain the prevalence and justification of the use of age criteria in legislation. Belgium is a federal state with three communities and three regions, and the scrutiny has been restricted to the Flemish community and region. All legislation has been screened for the use of 50 or more years as an age criterion, and all occurrences have been critically examined. The paper focuses on three fields of statutory regulation: early retirement, concessionary public transport fares, and the different care entitlements of people with disabilities and of older people. Evidence of age discrimination was found, although often in a form that benefits older people. The justification of the age criterion was often inadequate, so the adoption often appears no more than convenient standard practice. The paper concludes that policy makers should consider the systematic replacement of age thresholds by other criteria.

In most western nations, laws discourage discrimination in paid employment on the basis of disability, but for these policies to be of benefit, individuals must define their functional limitations as disabilities. There is a strong relationship between age and disability among those of working age, yet it is unclear whether older workers attribute their limitations to disability or to ‘natural ageing’. If the latter is true, they may not believe that they need or qualify for workplace accommodations (i.e. adaptations or interventions at the workplace). Similarly, if an employer ascribes a worker's limitation to ‘natural ageing’, rather than to a disability, they may not offer compensatory accommodation. Using data from the Canadian 2001 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, this paper asks whether workers who ascribe their functional limitation to ageing are as likely as those who do not to report a need for a workplace accommodation. It also addresses whether those who identify a need for compensatory accommodations and who ascribe their limitation to ageing have unmet workplace-accommodation needs. The findings suggest that, even when other factors are controlled, e.g. the type and severity of disability, the number of limiting conditions, gender, age, education, income and occupation, those who made the ageing attribution were less likely to recognise the need for an accommodation; and among those who acknowledged a need, those who ascribed their disability to ageing were less likely to have their needs met.

Understanding vulnerability matters because being vulnerable represents a profoundly undesirable state. People who experience vulnerability in old age are of obvious humanitarian concern, as their insecurity and heightened exposure to certain threats is likely to be compounded by reduced capacities for coping independently. Comprehension of the causes and consequences of vulnerability is important for the development of social policies as it indicates ways of avoiding and alleviating bad outcomes. Policies which have the concept of vulnerability at their heart encourage the development of preventive and targeted measures, which is crucial in conditions of financial constraints and competing demands. By studying vulnerability we investigate processes of relative disadvantage or exclusion and, for purposes of comparison, absolute differences in socio-economic or policy context can be set aside. This makes the study of vulnerability particularly germane to cross-cultural and cross-national research on old-age and elderly support.

The aim of this special issue is to examine the relationships between support for older people and various socio-demographic, cultural and policy factors in selected European countries and the United States, using the international comparative perspective developed by the members of the Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences (FAMSUP) network. Four of the included papers were delivered by network members at a symposium on ‘Family Support for Older People: International Comparisons’ that was held at the International Sociological Association (ISA) Inter-Congress Conference on Ageing Societies and Ageing Sociology: Diversity and Change in a Global World at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, in the suburbs of London (7–9 September 2004). Another paper, by Jim Ogg, a FAMSUP member, and Sylvie Renaut, investigates family networks among older people using data from the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

By the late 20th century, the plight of millions of older people in many developed countries was regarded as serious and was acknowledged to require concerted cross-national remedial action. Sociologists and social gerontologists only then were beginning to put together explanations rooted in the evolution of social policy and its corresponding institutions. One thesis that attracted support was that the dependency of the aged had been ‘structured’ by long-term economic and social policies. During the final decades of the 20th century, older people were perceived and treated, according to accumulating research evidence, as more dependent than they really were or needed to be. This had been fostered by the emerging institutions of retirement, income maintenance, and residential and domiciliary care. This development had been the responsibility primarily of the State, which tried to deliver welfare but also to accommodate the market. Forms of discrimination against older people had become, or continued to be, as deep as forms of discrimination against women and ethnic minorities. Such ‘institutionalised ageism’ had to be countered. Hopes were invested in anti-discriminatory policies that reflected good reciprocal relationships between the generations in many families and the rights of individuals of any age to human dignity and opportunities to practise their skills. The globalisation of the market and affiliation to neo-liberal policies, together with the simultaneous passage of various instruments of human rights, have changed the nature of the problem, and therefore the debate, during the early 21st century. This paper argues that the release and implementation during and after the Second World War of collective liberal egalitarian values, expressed in many countries in international statements on human rights, as will be shown, had a big impact on the design of public services, including those for older people. If the claims for the elderly in the welfare states of 50 years ago were exaggerated, as we can now safely conclude, the claims for older people today are even more exaggerated – at a time of heightened emphasis on individual rights and individual market powers. The various problems of ‘structured’ dependency persist, and seem set to grow in many parts of the world. Human rights offer a framework of rigorous analysis and anti-discriminatory work. Success depends on good operational measurement, and the incorporation of international and national institutions and policies that reflect those rights.

Social pension programmes play a key role in old-age support systems through their ability to reach vulnerable older persons. Pension income helps to sustain households affected by extreme poverty and vulnerability, by providing resources for spending that protects against vulnerability, and thereby they facilitate economic and social development. Under apartheid, South Africa's citizens were categorised according to race, and persons classified as Asian, black and coloured (mixed race) had less access to the opportunities and resources available to whites. Parity in the amount of social pension benefits paid to beneficiaries in the different ethnic categories was achieved only in 1993. The Non-Contributory Pensions and Poverty Study (NCPPS), conducted in Brazil and South Africa, has assessed the impact of social pension income on household poverty alleviation. This paper draws on the findings of the South African survey to analyse the differential effects of pension income on household poverty alleviation in three ethnic-geographic groups. Its data show a pervasive social and economic gradient of disadvantage among the groups, with rural-black households being most disadvantaged, urban-coloured households least disadvantaged, and urban-black households in between. The impact of pension income on household poverty alleviation has a similar pattern. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the achievement of equity through informed policy interventions.

This paper introduces the Special Issue of four empirical studies on the provision of family support to older people that have been written members of the Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences (FAMSUP) network. They have in common the use of individual-level data and recognition of the importance of demographic forces, cultural variations and public policy in shaping patterns of elder care. The four papers are also explicitly comparative, and emphasise both between- and within-country differences. The European countries examined by the FAMSUP researchers exhibit several broadly similar demographic trends, but these are superimposed on very different policy regimes. The ‘macro’ focus of much comparative policy-oriented research facilitates the identification and description of population ageing, while illuminating the policy issues raised by demographic change. A macro-focus is also characteristic of much comparative welfare-state analysis. The ‘micro’ orientation of the research presented in this collection typically treats the policy environment as an implicit or residual category. We argue that progress in understanding comparative patterns of elder care, and in developing policy responses to demographic change, will be facilitated through blending the macro and micro perspectives, in which variations in the policy environment are explicitly linked to individual- and family-level behaviour.

The South Korean National Pension scheme was instituted in 1988 and now covers all private-sector employees and the self-employed. Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, it has become controversial and is under considerable pressure, not least because of the perceived financial implications of the country's rapidly ageing population. Predictions of financial shortfalls or ‘unsustainability’ have prompted calls for severe ‘downsizing’ of the scheme. The debate on the reform of the scheme has been dominated by the need to respond to demographic change in ways that assist the national economy, invariably by reducing social expenditure. The debate, however, has given little attention to the social or welfare functions of the pension scheme, though the material insecurity of older people has been exacerbated by major changes in the labour market and the family. This paper details recent socio-demographic changes in Korea and discusses their implications for old-age security and pension reform. It argues that public-pension schemes should be developed to strengthen social protection against the insecurities of old-age, that intra-generational redistribution should be at the core of the reformed arrangements, and that the introduction of a comprehensive non-contributory pension scheme should be seriously considered.

This paper reports findings of a study in 2004 of the development of specialist services for older people in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, as recommended in the Department of Health's National Service Framework for Older People (NSF-OP). The study was funded by the Department of Health as part of a programme of research to explore the Framework's implementation. Information was collected through a questionnaire survey about the nature of specialist developments at three levels of the NHS: strategic health authorities (SHAs), provider Trusts, and service units. This produced an overview of developments and a frame from which to select detailed case studies. Analysis of the survey data showed that there were variations in the way that the NSF-OP was being interpreted and implemented. In particular, there was inconsistency in the interpretation of the NSF-OP's anti-ageism standard; some concluded that the strategy discouraged services exclusively for older people, others that it encouraged dedicated provision for them. The tension between creating age-blind and age-defined services was played out in the context of existing service structures, which had been shaped over decades by many local and national influences. These conceptual and historical factors need to be taken into account if services are to change, as developments are shaped by ‘bottom-up’ local processes as well as ‘top-down’ policy initiatives. In particular, the tension inherent in the NSF-OP between negative and positive ageism, and its varied interpretations at local levels needs to be taken into account when evaluating progress in implementation.

Retirement is undergoing structural and discursive transformations that have implications for the individual and social experience and management of later life. Although discourses about retirement do not determine how individuals will prepare for and act as ‘retirees’, they provide morally-laden messages that shape people's possibilities for being and acting. Using Canadian newspaper articles published in 1999 and 2000, and drawing upon the governmentality perspective, this study explores the interconnections between neo-liberal political rationality and discursive constructions of ‘retiree’ subjectivities. The analysis demonstrates the ways in which certain subjectivities, and their associated technologies and practices of the self that are consistent with neo-liberal political rationality, are being shaped as ideal for ‘retirees’. The paper critically examines this process and its implications, and argues that the personal ‘freedom’ promised with the idealised life practices is ultimately illusory, because they oblige older people to resist or defy ageing through relentless projects of self-reflection and improvement, self-marketing, risk management, lifestyle maximisation and body optimisation. The implications of the neo-liberal discourse about old age and ‘retirees’ for future social policies and older people's services are critically examined.

Identifying vulnerable older people and understanding the causes and consequences of their vulnerability is of human concern and an essential task of social policy. To date, vulnerability in old age has mainly been approached by identifying high risk groups, like the poor, childless, frail or isolated. Yet vulnerability is the outcome of complex interactions of discrete risks, namely of being exposed to a threat, of a threat materialising, and of lacking the defences or resources to deal with a threat. In this article, we review approaches to vulnerability in various disciplines in order to develop a systematic framework for approaching vulnerability. This framework distinguishes and examines the interactions among the domains of exposure, threats, coping capacities and outcomes. Drawing on European and Asian gerontological literature, we discuss what might be meant by these domains and their place in the understanding of vulnerability in old age. Two case studies are presented – one on homelessness in Britain, the other on familial care provision in Indonesia – to illustrate the ways in which specific vulnerabilities are created and distributed over the lifecourse.

People in advanced old age with frailties and those who are resident in old-age institutions manage their identities within the constraints of stigmatised settings. This paper compares the processes of identity construction in an old-age home and in a sheltered housing project for older people in Israel. Applying a symbolic-interactionist perspective that sees old-age institutions as social arenas for the reconstruction of identity, the paper first distinguishes the residents' constructions of stigma and deviance. While the old-age home residents collectively turned their stigma into a source of positive labelling, the sheltered housing residents drew advantages from their previous roles and statuses. Gossip is shown to play a critical role in reproducing stigma, particularly in the old-age home. These findings are used to demonstrate the variability and potential for adaptation among the residents – who are often stereotyped as homogeneous and passive. The paper concludes with a discussion of the literal and metaphorical languages used by older people, and of stigma as a positive instrument that can introduce content into the definition of the self.

The contemporary discussion about the growing ‘burden of population ageing’ should not neglect the substantial productive potential of older people. Using micro-data from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this paper examines the relationships between selected socio-demographic characteristics and the rates of participation in voluntary work in 10 European countries among those aged 50 or more years. The analysis reveals a clear spatial pattern, with relatively high participation rates in Northern Europe and relatively low participation rates in Mediterranean countries, and shows that age, education, health and involvement in other social activities strongly influence an individual's propensity to engage in volunteer work. A multivariate logistic regression provided no indication that the country differences can be explained by variations in population composition or attributes, such as the age structure or differences in health status. The findings have important implications for future cross-national research and for policies to promote the participation of older adults in voluntary work, and suggest that policies and programmes to encourage older citizens to make greater use of their productive capacities are feasible. It is concluded that further research needs to account for the influences of institutions and culture on participation in volunteering, the finding of this paper.

Contemporary trends in population ageing and urbanisation in the developing world imply that the extensive out-migration of young people from rural areas coincides with, and is likely to exacerbate, a rise in the older share of the rural population. This paper examines the impact of migration on vulnerability at older ages by drawing on the results of anthropological and demographic field studies in three Indonesian communities. The methodology for identifying vulnerable older people has a progressively sharper focus, beginning first with important differences between the communities, then examining variations by socio-economic strata, and finally the variability of older people's family networks. Comparative analysis indicates considerable heterogeneity in past and present migration patterns, both within and between villages. The migrants' contributions are a normal and important component of older people's support, often in combination with those of local family members. Higher status families are commonly able to reinforce their position by making better use of migration opportunities than the less advantaged. Although family networks in the poorer strata may effect some redistribution of the children's incomes, their social networks are smaller and insufficient to overcome their marked disadvantages. Vulnerability thus arises where several factors, including migration histories, result in unusually small networks, and when the migrations are within rural areas.

‘Caring for carers’ is high on the United Kingdom policy agenda for community care. Although recent policy advocates the provision of services directly to the carer, research suggests that an alternative way of helping carers is through targeting enhanced services towards the cared-for person. This paper reports a randomised controlled trial of the effects on carer distress of an additional specialist clinical assessment for vulnerable older people at risk of residential or nursing home placement. The sample was composed of 142 informal carers of older people, randomly assigned to receive either the additional specialist assessment or the usual social services assessment. Carers were assessed using the modified Social Behaviour Assessment Schedule (SBAS), and data were also collected on older peoples' service use throughout the study period. Regression analyses indicated that changes in older peoples' behaviour, as opposed to carer or service-related factors, predicted changes in carer distress, and that the carers of the older people who experienced depressive symptoms received the greatest benefit from the specialist assessment. The study suggests that an effective means of improving outcomes for carers may be to target services towards the distressing behaviours of the person for whom they care, with symptoms of depression being particularly important.

Against a background of limited previous research, this paper examines the access to health and social care among older people in the farming communities of County Down, Northern Ireland. In-depth interviews were conducted with 45 people aged 60 or more years living on family farms to collect information about health care needs and service use and adequacy. In addition, interviews with service providers provided information on their perceptions of the farming communities' needs. The findings indicate that there are specific rural dimensions of access to services and that among the respondents there was substantial unmet need. For many farming families, using services is determined by much more than being able to reach them physically. The lack of reliable information, the culture of stoicism and the absence of appropriate services impeded obtaining effective support. Recent health care policies and strategies have stressed the importance of developing local services that are responsive to need in consultation with service users, but there is worryingly little evidence that this has occurred. It is concluded that if effective outcomes are to be achieved, policies must recognise the specific characteristics of rural populations and be sensitive to the needs, attitudes and expectations of farming families. The current lack of understanding about the distinct needs of these communities at present exacerbates the isolation and marginalisation of already vulnerable older people.

The ‘sandwich generation’ has been conceptualised as those mid-life adults who simultaneously raise dependent children and care for frail elderly parents. Such a combination of dependants is in fact very unusual, and the more common situation is when adults in late mid-life or early old age have one or more surviving parents and adult but still partly dependent children. It can be hypothesised that for parents in this pivotal position, the demands from adult children and from elderly parents compete, with the result that those who provide help to one are less likely to provide help to the other. An alternative hypothesis, however, is that family solidarity has an important influence but is not universal, so that some pivotal-generation parents engage in intergenerational exchange in both directions, and there is a positive association between helping parents and helping children. To investigate this question, the paper presents an analysis of data from two broadly comparable national surveys, in Great Britain and the United States, on the care provided by women aged 55–69 years to their descendent and ascendent relatives. The results show that around one-third of the women reported providing help to members of both generations, and that around one-fifth provided support to neither. They broadly support the solidarity hypothesis, but provide some evidence that having three or more children is associated with a reduced likelihood of providing help to a parent.

The article aims to answer three questions: How strong are the bonds of obligations and expectations between generations? To what extent are different types of support exchanged between generations? What are the impacts of filial norms, opportunity structures and emotional bonds on the exchange of inter-generational support between adult children and older parents across societies? It reports findings from the five-country (Norway, England, Germany, Spain and Israel) OASIS study, which collected data from representative, age-stratified, urban-community samples of about 1,200 respondents in each country. The findings indicate that solidarity is general and considerable although the strengths of its dimensions vary by country. Most respondents acknowledged some degree of filial obligation, although the proportions were higher in Spain and Israel than in the northern countries, and there was greater variation in the tangible forms than in the expressed norms. Adult children were net providers of support, but older parents provided emotional support and financial help. Most support was provided to unmarried older parents with physical-function limitations. The effect of filial norms on help provision by adult children was moderate but significant and variable across the five countries, appearing more prescriptive in the south than in the north, where inter-generational exchanges were more open to negotiation. The findings demonstrate that cross-national analyses provide insights into both country-specific factors and the sometimes unexpected similarities among them.

This paper reports a study of the complex associations between older people's participation in activities and their wellbeing in later life using data from a national sample of 1,334 Jewish-Israeli retirees. Confirmatory factor analysis substantiated a division of the activities into solitary, formal and informal categories, as postulated by activity theory. The outcome measure, the latent construct wellbeing, was compiled from scores on the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), a global measure of life satisfaction, and a measure of satisfaction with the use of time. The analysis also examined the influence of socio-economic status, health status and the quality of inter-personal relationships. ‘Social relationship quality’, also a latent construct, was a composite of measures of satisfaction with children, friends and neighbours and a self-rated loneliness scale. Path analysis using structural equation modelling was employed. The results showed that when the quality of social relationships was taken into account, the amount of activity had no independent effect on the respondents' wellbeing. Moreover, it was social relationship quality, a facet of informal activity that has generally been neglected in activity research, that emerged as the most influential variable in the association between activity and wellbeing. Thus, the findings provide empirical backing for the assertion that the quality of social ties matters more than activity participation per se as predictors of a good old age.

This paper examines older people's contrasting images of older people as ‘those like us’ and as ‘others’. It draws on data from a qualitative study about the experience of ageing that was undertaken in partnership with two local groups of older people in England. Whilst the informants acknowledged their chronological age, changes in appearance and physical limitations, most did not describe themselves as old. They challenged the idea of older people as being ‘past it’. Older people who personified their own values of inter-dependence, reciprocity and keeping going were seen as ‘heroines’ of old age, but negative stereotypes were ascribed simultaneously to others, ‘the villains’. Aspects of behaviour which evoked censure were ‘giving up’; ‘refusal to be helped’ and ‘taking without putting back’, and were usually attributed to acquaintances known only at a distance. The victims of old age were primarily people with dementia, who were perceived as ‘needing to be looked after’ and objects of pity and concern. The paper explores the ways in which these various images of old age related to people's self-identity and management of the ageing process; especially in a society that has ambivalent conceptions of old age. The findings contribute to an understanding of how people's values underpin their conception of ‘a good old age’ and how they shape their interpretation of societal stereotypes. They also indicate the importance of considering whose voices are heard in the context of exploring the identity and contributions of older people to achieve a more inclusive society.