This book examines claims that aging populations will create serious economic problems for various nations. It examines the question in large part through the eyes of researchers and legislators in three target countries: Australia, Japan, and the United States. These countries were chosen because of similar states of economic development and because all were experiencing a rapid aging of their populations. A comprehensive overview is provided of the economic issues related to aging populations. Several aspects are explored in more depth. To date, it is the most complete and thorough study of economic issues associated with population aging. After a brief review of the phenomenon of demographic aging, the authors give a summary of the major economic programs offered to the aged. Extensive research is used to evaluate the concept of dependency ratios and to predict the impact on younger and older persons of future economic and demographic growth. This discussion then provides the basis for a review of evolving retirement policies in the three countries. Special attention is given to the way pension plans have been designed, especially early and mandatory retirement policies. An assessment of the adequacy of retirement income follows. The final three chapters are devoted to policy options for the future, given trends in demographic aging. Social scientists and economists will be most interested in this study.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country's history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.

This book explores positive aging through the lens of precarity, aiming to ground positive aging theories in current social contexts. In recent years, research on aging has been branded by growing disagreements between supporters of the successful aging model and critical gerontologists who highlight the widening inequalities, disadvantages and precarity that characterize old age. This book comes to fill a gap in knowledge by offering an alternative view on positive aging, informed by precarity and its impact on projections concerning aging. The first part of the book places aging in broader theoretical and empirical context, exploring the complex links between views on aging, successful aging theories, policy and social reality. The second part uses results from a qualitative research conducted in Germany to illustrate the dissonance between successful aging ideals and both negative and positive views on aging as well as aging preparation strategies inspired by precarity. Findings from this section provide a solid starting point for comparisons with countries that are both similar and different from Germany in terms of welfare regimes and aging policies. The final part of the book discusses the psychological implications of these findings within and beyond the German case study and outlines potential solutions for practice. This book provides health psychologists, gerontologists, sociologists, social workers, health professionals as well as students and aging individuals themselves with better understanding of the meaning of aging in precarious times and builds confidence about aging well despite precarity.

This innovative book provides a new conceptual analysis of loneliness - a condition associated with severe health consequences, including increased morbidity and early death. Arguing that social connection is not the only answer, it explores pathways for transforming loneliness to healthy solitude. The first part of the book draws on the humanities and arts, including psychology, philosophy, and literature to analyse the common, and potentially serious, problem of loneliness. It makes the case that the condition is less a deficiency than a state of self-disconnection that modernity feeds through social forces. The second part of the book looks at how person-centred health care can help educate persons to transform loneliness into healthy solitude. It provides an analysis of self-connection and spiritual connection, discussing how these forms of contact can mitigate risks associated with both lack of social connection, and social connection itself, such as self-disconnection and rejection by others. It goes on to demonstrate that connection to the self and spirit can make aloneness a resource and facilitate access to benefits of connecting with others. This thought-provoking book provides students, scholars, and practitioners from a range of health and social care backgrounds with a new way of thinking about, researching, and practising with lonely people.

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The Electrified Mind helps therapists understand and empathize with patients who rely heavily upon cell phones and the internet for the purposes of self-expression as well as for defensive avoidance of actual interpersonal contact. The chapters by distinguished mental health professionals delineate therapeutic strategies for dealing with the dilemmas that arise in working with children, adolescents, and adults excessively involved with cyberspace at the cost of meaningful human relationships.

This book engages with the concept of age-friendly environments, adopting multi-perspectivity to demonstrate how age-friendly environments can contribute to shifting how we think, feel and act toward issues of age and ageing and operate as a vehicle to improve understandings of ageism. Drawing from traditionally distinct fields, the text demonstrates theoretical and applied dimensions of the age-friendly global agenda, with several chapters discussing topics that have to date been underrepresented in age-friendly scholarship, including education, health and justice systems. The case studies encourage critical engagement with the issue of ageism in age-friendly scholarship. It presents a clear understanding of the inequalities, challenges and opportunities of ageing and of the ways international, regional, national and sub-national commitments in health, development and human rights, and are further impacted by, ageing through designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating policies and programmes. The essays utilise a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue to enhance discussion of the age-friendly environment agenda through the inclusion of age-friendly perspectives in addition to its processes and destinations in an ageing society. The book serves as a catalyst to stimulate research, policy and public interest in the physical, social and regulatory environments in which we age and the consequent impact upon health and well-being. It will be of interest to professors, graduate students and undergraduate students in policy, sociology, health, planning and gerontology. It is also recommended reading for policy makers, politicians, think tanks and lobbyists, who are concerned with age all-age-inclusiveness.

This book focuses on the emerging global old age care industry developing as a response to tackle the "old age care crisis" in richer countries. In this global industry, multiple actors are involved in recruiting, skilling and placing migrant care workers in different spheres of the receiving country's old age care system. This book delves into the analysis of these actors and the multiple levels influencing their activities. Accordingly, it examines the significance of old age care regimes and policies as well as intermediaries and promoters for initiating, shaping and perpetuating old age care arrangements based on migrant labor and the relationships within them. Particular emphasis is placed on the risks and implications of these arrangements for the well-being and the social protection of the different actors involved. The book analyzes these processes and structures from a global perspective including different countries and regions of the world.

Ageing, Narrative and Identity: New Qualitative Social Research outlines the methodology and results of the Fiction and the Cultural Mediation of Ageing Project (FCMAP), led by a research team from Brunel University, UK. In investigating how older people resist stereotypical cultural representations of ageing, the study demonstrates the importance of narrative understanding to social agency. This book will therefore be of interest not only to students and researchers in the growing interdisciplinary field of Ageing Studies, but also to those with interests in Social Policy, Social Narrative and wider socio-cultural conceptions of the interaction between representation and everyday life.

Until recently, age discrimination attracted little social opprobrium. However, ageism has now been thrust onto the equality agenda by the spectre of an ageing population. This has led to a range of policies on 'active ageing.' Most importantly, legally binding legislation prohibiting age discrimination in employment will need to be in place by 2006. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the key issues. To what extent is age inevitably linked with declining capacity? What are the central aims of a policy on age equality, and how can these be realised in law? How should law and policy address age discrimination in health, education and employment? What lessons can be learned from the US and Europe? And should young people be dealt with in the same way as older people? This book answers these questions in a series of chapters by experts from a wide range of disciplines. It begins by examining the nature of the ageing process and then turns to a detailed analysis of the concept of age equality. In the light of this analysis, the following three chapters critically assess employment, education, and health. A separate chapter is devoted to discrimination against children. The last two chapters consider the experience in the US, and other European countries.

* Provides a comprehensive and timely overview and analysis of the silent epidemic of drug and substance abuse involving elderly Americans * The author team wrote the first clinical pharmacology/therapeutics text in North America for the elderly * No other academic author in North America has more direct clinical experience in the field of drug and substance abuse or has written more related textbooks specifically for health care professionals

Very timely to the region - "The ageing of the world's population is rapidly growing primarily due to an increase in life expectancy as well as to declining fertility rates. The 2016 Population Data Sheet by United Nations ESCAP disclosed that approximately 16% (1.3 billion) of the population in the Asia-Pacific Region would be 60 years or older by 2050. All countries, including those in Asia, are facing significant challenges (social, economic and political) with this rapid demographic transition characterized by reductions in infectious and acute diseases overshadowed by the rapid emergence of non-communicable and degenerative diseases."

1. Innovative wellness group model for veterans and older adults 2. Offer two formats provided: process-focused and activity-based (for persons with disabilities or needs additional guidance) 3. Includes group activities for practitioners 4. Evidenced-based group intervention

1. Innovative wellness group model for veterans and older adults 2. Offer two formats provided: process-focused and activity-based (for persons with disabilities or needs additional guidance) 3. Includes group activities for practitioners 4. Evidenced-based group intervention

This book presents studies of the main conditions that affect health and well-being of old people. Considering the present scenario of COVID-19, the effects of this viral infection on individuals older than 65 years are also discussed. The content enables professionals of health and government for the present and future actions in this important area. Readers go through the changes occurring in organs and tissues that can interfere with susceptibility to infections, low response to vaccines, cancer, and loss of cognition during the aging process. A discussion of the central role played by the immune system in the age-related diseases and how the immunity can be impaired during the ageing process is presented. Possibilities to circumvent these conditions via healthy habits in diet, physical exercise, and new pharmacological interventions are part of the content. This book discusses how human healthy longevity is dependent, at least in part, of a functional immune system. Chapters were written for researchers in the field of aging and is especially suited for those interested in the study of immunosenescence and inflammaging affecting the health of old individuals.

* Provides a comprehensive and timely overview and analysis of the silent epidemic of drug and substance abuse involving elderly Americans * The author team wrote the first clinical pharmacology/therapeutics text in North America for the elderly * No other academic author in North America has more direct clinical experience in the field of drug and substance abuse or has written more related textbooks specifically for health care professionals

Mobile Citizenship addresses the crucial question of how mobility reconfigures citizenship. Engaging with debates on transnationalism, citizenship, and lifestyle migration, the book draws on ethnographic research and interview material collected among retired lifestyle migrants moving south from Germany to Turkey to explore the practices and narratives of these privileged migrants. Revealing the ways in which these migrants relate to their old homes and to their new places, the author examines the social, political, and spatial dimensions of citizenship and belonging and argues that citizenship is key to understanding the privileges of transnational lifestyles. By taking up discussions emanating from studies on other privileged lifestyle migrations-around social welfare and well-being, social participation, and affective belonging, as well as class and racialized privileges-the book exposes particular comparative value and showcases similarities and differences across this emerging type of migration. Mobile Citizenship thus shows how citizenship allows for mobility, resources, and privilege yet is also replete with limitations and ambivalences. The book brings together perspectives on citizenship, space, and privilege and will appeal to social scientists with interests in lifestyle migration and citizenship and their interconnections with global and social inequalities.

This ground-breaking study of the baby boomer generation, who are now entering old age, breaks new ground in ageing research. This post-war cohort has experienced a range of social, cultural, and medical changes in regard to their notions of body, from the introduction of the Pill and the decoupling of sex and procreation to the H-Bomb and Earthrise. Yet, paradoxically, ageing is also universal. This exciting book reflects the intersection of time, ageing, body and identity to give a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the ageing process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life globally through virus-related mortality and morbidity and the social and economic impacts of actions taken to stop the virus' spread. It became evident early on during the pandemic that older adults are especially vulnerable to morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, and the adverse consequences of strategies taken to mitigate its effects. While no more likely to become infected than younger populations, the risk for hospitalization and death rises considerably with age. Residents of long-term care facilities have been among the hardest hit. The pandemic has brought many facets of ageism to the fore. Community stay-at-home messages, lockdowns, social distancing requirements, and visitation restrictions contributed to a concomitant epidemic in social isolation and loneliness. Economic and social impacts have been dramatic; so too has been the disproportionate hardship experienced by members of racial and ethnic minority communities. This book reports original empirical research and perspectives on the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the older adult population, and draws lessons for policy, research, and practice. Key issues pertaining to the impact of COVID-19 on older adults and their families, caregivers, and communities are highlighted. Four main areas are examined: personal experiences with COVID-19; long-term care system impacts; end-of-life care; and technology and innovation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Aging & Social Policy.

In 1970 social workers were in great demand and their numbers were growing. At the same time questions were asked on both sides of the Atlantic about the methods they employed, their objectives and the effectiveness of their efforts. Previous studies undertaken in the United States to test the effectiveness of social casework had led to intense controversy between researchers and practitioners. Originally published in 1970, the field experiment described in this book was the first British attempt to assess the effectiveness of social work. A team led by a social worker, including a physician and a statistician, assessed the social and medical conditions of 300 aged applicants to a local authority welfare department and determined their needs for help. Half of these old people were randomly selected to receive help from trained caseworkers; the other half, also randomly chosen, remained with experienced local authority welfare officers without professional training. The social and medical conditions of the surviving clients were reassessed after an interval. Both sets of social workers had achieved much in alleviating practical needs. But the trained workers brought about more change in their clients' activities, feelings and attitudes. The opinions of the old people about the services they received and the social workers who had carried them out added another dimension to this pioneer study which contributed to research methodology, helped to clarify operational goals in social work, made a beginning in measuring social work effort and enlarged our meagre knowledge of social work with old people at the time.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This volume presents a range of research approaches to the exploration of ageing during a pandemic situation. One of the first collections of its kind, it offers an array of studies employing research methodologies that lend themselves to replication in similar contexts by those seeking to understand the effects of epidemics on older people. Thematically organised, it shows how to reconcile qualitative and quantitative approaches, thus rendering them complementary, bringing together studies from around the world to offer an international perspective on ageing as it relates to an unprecedented epidemiological phenomenon. As such, it will appeal to researchers in the field of gerontology, as well as sociologists of medicine and clinicians seeking to understand the disruptive effects of the recent coronavirus outbreak on later life.

Until recently, older men were not a social phenomenon commanding great attention. Older men are a distinct minority among men, accounting for 15 percent of the adult male population. Among elders, older men are still outnumbered by older women three to two, and there are only two men for every five women over age 85. However, the importance of gender to age, and age to gender, is being acknowledged by gerontologists as well as gender scholars. This work is the first thorough study of the research examining older men as men.

Thompson was able to locate more than 750 articles, which are organized by subject (Gendered Aging, Health and Well-Being, Sexuality, Suicide and Alcohol, Religiosity and Spirituality, Stereotypes and Social Constructions, Relationships and Social Life, Family Relations, Caregiving, Economics and Retirement, Living Arrangements, and Resources and Needs) and selectively annotated. Access is also aided by extensive subject and author indexes. This groundbreaking volume will be of great interest to gerontologists, sociologists, and all researchers concerned with gender issues.