Suchergebnisse

Since the 1950s, multinational institutions have taken a number of positions towards population ageing and later life. In 1994, the World Bank (WB) saw population ageing as a crisis that needed 'averting'. The United Nations (UN) approach evolved from the individualized, compassionate ageism of 1981 to a developmental, 'society for all ages', perspective in 2002. Yet the UN made comparatively little headway. In 2021 the UN launched its Decade of Healthy Ageing to support the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda's 'leave no one behind' goal. The UN rightly sees ageing as a lifelong, societal and developmental process and strongly supported the evidence that unequal resource distribution is the main contributor to health inequalities across the lifespan. Despite this evidence, the focus is now on a biomedical framing of impaired health and on a multi-stakeholder approach that emphasizes the Silver Economy's economic potential. The first two years of the decade saw significant efforts to generate private-sector support. While the Decade of Healthy Ageing is still young, there is much good, harm and missed opportunity that can happen in a decade, justifying early consideration of what the Silver Economy's biomedical approach will do for older people in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

Increasing longevity and urbanisation are the two major trends facing development in the 21st century. It is widely accepted that urbanisation provides enormous potential for younger persons to secure greater economic opportunities and social freedom. What is less often recognised is that these potentials also apply to later life, increasing older persons' capabilities and the securing of their rights to dignity and self-definition. Yet there are risks of marginalisation, discrimination, deprivation and of the impacts of unsustainable development. The key question is not whether urban areas can afford to improve the lives of older persons but what prevents policy makers from realising the importance of intergenerational interdependence for development. The chapter demonstrates that recognising and enhancing older persons' social, economic and political inclusion will benefit everyone. It does so by focusing on the opportunities and constraints that urban centres represent for less advantaged people living in low- and middle-income countries.

Abstract
Despite having the second largest population of people over age 60, India has yet to generate an effective national framework for confronting the exigencies of later life, especially those that are derived from a lifetime of poverty. This article demonstrates that this lack of interest in 'past' generations is driven by the unfortunate coincidence of externally endorsed concerns and concepts, and internal politics. Foundational assumptions on the economy and development and on old-age capacities and inter-generational relations, push for evidence collation which disincentivises more empirically relevant analyses, creating the fiction of dependency ratios and inhibiting the generation of evidence-based knowledge on later life. The consequence is that India prioitises current and future generations over 'past' generations. Policies on older people, who are treated as 'other' at international and national levels, are tied to competition for votes at national and state elections. Currently, policy is not designed around the concept of older people's rights, nor of meeting need. The first outcome of external and internal drivers is that national and state governments are not interested in, nor know, how many older people qualify for a pension; instead they fix budget ceilings and, at a local level, allocate and manage pensions in a random fashion. The second outcome is that pension values are allowed to wither on the vine, waiting on the political context in which one or more parties places a pension uplift at the centre of their manifesto.

This article looks at intergenerational relations in two Chakkliyar neighbourhoods in rural Tamil Nadu. Post-1991 economic changes, together with longer-term changes in the rural economy and state policies, have significantly widened the customary 'needs gap' between younger and older generations by expanding the needs and aspirations of younger generations both absolutely and in comparison to the perceived needs of older people, whilst not providing them with the means to meet those needs. The declining demand for agricultural labour has not only constrained sons' capacities to meet the needs of both their conjugal and natal families, but also severely undermined older people's livelihoods as they compete with younger people for agricultural work. The cause of the elderly Chakkliyars' tenuous subsistence lies not with negligent sons but with the way their vulnerabilities are built into the structure of the economy, society and polity.

The failure of gender and development studies to investigate men's gendering casts doubt on the value of much extent feminist research. The question examined in this article is how can researchers develop a more empathetic approach to the difficulties facing men without losing sight of the consequences of domestic gender hierarchies for women. (DSE/DÜI)