Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Affects of the
ageing population
- Public services
- Older people consume a larger proportion
of public services than younger generations
- Old Old - 75+
- Young Old - 65 - 74
- Increased expenditure in health
- One-person
pensioner households
- Increased number of
one-person households
- Account for 4%
of households
- Most females as they
live longer than men
- The dependency ratio
- Non-working
old are
economically
dependent
- Working age
have to pay for
them (e.g. taxes)
- Retired people rising increases the
dependency ratio on working age
- However,
pension
age
increasing
- Although increasing
dependency ratio for
older generation,
decreasing burden
because of less
dependent children
- Social construction
of ageing as a
'problem'
- Average age
of the UK is
increasing
- Griffiths report on the care of
the elderly saw society as
facing a problem of meeting the
escalating costs of heath and
social care for the growing
numbers of old people
- Fears of how
society will meet
the cost of
providing pensions
- Ageism -
stereotype
based on age
- Old portrayed
as vulnerable,
incompetent
or irrational, a
burden to
society
- In traditional
societies,
elderly
respected and
revered
- Townsend says one reason for negative attitudes to
the elderly is that our view has been socially
constructed as a period of dependency by creating a
statutory retirement age at which most people are
expected to stop working and rely on inadequate
benefits which drives many into poverty
- Policy implications
- Hirsch says that social policies and
trends need to be put in place to
tackle problems created by an ageing
population
- Paying for the old - more
taxes, longer hours
- Hirsch argues e
have to reverse
the current
trend towards
early retirement
- Do this by
redistributing
educational
resources to
elderly so
they can
continue to
develop skills
and earn
- Changing
housing policy to
encourage
elderly to have
smaller housing
- Hirsch recognises
these policies also
need a cultural
change in our
attitudes
- How we view old
people is a social
construct, not a
biological fact
- Ageing population a result of:
- Increasing life expectancy
- Declining infant mortality
- Declining fertility