Suchergebnisse

Sociology of health and illness has been enlivened with increased understanding of the complex roles, social factors and structures play in individual and societal health and well-being. New insights are simultaneously empirical and conceptual, leading to innovative approaches to analysis, as well as new conceptual frameworks. Three examples are: the social gradient of health, the population health perspective and the saliency of social fabric to both individual and societal well-being. Nonetheless, puzzles remain such as how social inequalities get under the skin, why socioeconomic improvements do not always yield life expectancy gains, and how to reduce health disparities and inequalities.

Generation is a packed social concept with immense explanatory capacity and policy utility, yet it is a concept fraught with misunderstanding and underestimation in the aging and family policy literatures. This paper has three objectives: (1) to explore generation as a socially useful explanatory concept; (2) to show how generation has been conceptualized theoretically and historically in ways useful today; and (3) to contemplate how policy debates can be illuminated by revival of the family meaning of generation. Generation as a family concept relies on inequality as a socially cohesive, positive notion, on relationality, on the dynamics of time and change. Transitions are expectable, not shocks, and ageing is a life course experience and stage, not a category or a group with special interests.

Les défis que pose le vieillissement démographique sont à plusieurs points de vue indissociables de la condition des femmes. Celles-ci ont des besoins physiques, sociaux et économiques différents de ceux des hommes. Ainsi, l'atteinte de maladies non létales mais entraînant l'incapacité, le veuvage et l'isolement qui souvent s'ensuit, de même que l'insuffisance des revenus de pension ou de retraite, posent aux femmes âgées des problèmes qui ne sont pas sans ressembler à ceux auxquels font face les femmes de tout âge. De plus, les fonctions d'aide aux autres, dont les parents âgés, sont le plus souvent imparties aux femmes qui ainsi, dans leur jeunesse ou leur maturité, se trouvent également concernées par le vieillissement. Cet article explore le phénomène du vieillissement démographique dans une perspective féministe.