A Research Agenda for Ageing and Social Policy (Elgar Research Agendas) 1802208127, 9781802208122

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Copyright
Contents
Contributors
Foreword
Preface
PART I Introduction
1 Introduction: why do we need a research agenda for ageing and social policy in the 21st century?
PART II Challenges and opportunities of ageing and social policies in the 21st century
2 Population ageing and the demographic deficit: exploring the second demographic dividend
3 Healthy ageing policies from regional and global perspectives: challenges for social policies and research
PART III Priorities for social policy research in the context of population and individual ageing
4 Ageism and public policies: research on age discrimination at the societal level
5 The future of active ageing and related needs for research
6 Shifts in social policies for old age: towards a life course approach of active ageing?
7 Labour market research for an ageing workforce in times of digitalisation
8 Digitalisation and population ageing: social policy dimensions of the digital divide and innovation
9 Social relations and the family
10 Rising longevity and health care systems: the need for a new approach in social and health policies and research
11 Longer lives with long-term care needs: research needed to tackle the care gap
12 Towards the caring or the uncaring state? A social policy perspective on long-term care trends
PART IV Perspectives from international stakeholders
13 Social policy research on ageing needed from the perspective of intergovernmental organisations
14 Social policy research on the ageing workforce from the perspective of employees and employers
PART V Conclusions
15 Conclusion: towards a research agenda for ageing and social policy in the 21st century
Index

Citation preview

A Research Agenda for Ageing and Social Policy

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www​.e​-elgar​.com.

A Research Agenda for Ageing and Social Policy Edited by

KAI LEICHSENRING

Executive Director, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (affiliated to the United Nations), Vienna, Austria

ALEXANDRE SIDORENKO

Senior Advisor, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (affiliated to the United Nations), Vienna, Austria

Elgar Research Agendas

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Kai Leichsenring and Alexandre Sidorenko 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023951409 This book is available electronically in the Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781802208139

ISBN 978 1 80220 812 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80220 813 9 (eBook)

EEP BoX

Contents

List of contributorsix Forewordxv Prefacexvii PART I 1

INTRODUCTION Introduction: why do we need a research agenda for ageing and social policy in the 21st century? Kai Leichsenring and Alexandre Sidorenko

PART II

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CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF AGEING AND SOCIAL POLICIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

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Population ageing and the demographic deficit: exploring the second demographic dividend  Sarah Harper and Yanan Zhang

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Healthy ageing policies from regional and global perspectives: challenges for social policies and research41 Norah Keating, Virpi Timonen and Tine Buffel

PART III

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PRIORITIES FOR SOCIAL POLICY RESEARCH IN THE CONTEXT OF POPULATION AND INDIVIDUAL AGEING

Ageism and public policies: research on age discrimination at the societal level Clemens Tesch-Römer and Liat Ayalon

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The future of active ageing and related needs for research  Oxana Sinyavskaya

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Shifts in social policies for old age: towards a life course approach of active ageing? Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen and Marvin Formosa

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Labour market research for an ageing workforce in times of digitalisation  Anette Scoppetta, Laura Naegele and Maria Varlamova

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Digitalisation and population ageing: social policy dimensions of the digital divide and innovation Alexander Peine, Anne Meissner and Anna Wanka

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Social relations and the family  Toni C. Antonucci, Jasmine A. Manalel, Robin C. Fenley and Martha C. Bial

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Rising longevity and health care systems: the need for a new approach in social and health policies and research Peter Lloyd-Sherlock and Poliana Fialho de Carvalho

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Longer lives with long-term care needs: research needed to tackle the care gap  Giovanni Lamura and Henk Nies

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Towards the caring or the uncaring state? A social policy perspective on long-term care trends  Teppo Kröger

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CONTENTS

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PART IV PERSPECTIVES FROM INTERNATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS 13

Social policy research on ageing needed from the perspective of intergovernmental organisations Nikolai Botev, Julia Ferre and Claudia Mahler

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Social policy research on the ageing workforce from the perspective of employees and employers 239 Krzysztof Hagemejer, Frank Hoffer and Michał Polakowski

PART V 15

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CONCLUSIONS

Conclusion: towards a research agenda for ageing and social policy in the 21st century Kai Leichsenring and Alexandre Sidorenko

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Index275

Contributors

Toni C. Antonucci is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Life Course Development Program at the University of Michigan, USA. Her research focuses on social relations and health (physical/psychological/cognitive) across the lifespan. She has conducted comparative studies on social relations and health in the United States, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. She is a member of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatics’ United Nations team. Liat Ayalon, PhD, is Professor at the School of Social Work, Bar Ilan University, Israel. She coordinated international EU-funded programmes on the topic of ageism (EuroAgeism.eu, EU COST Ageism). She consults for both national and international organizations concerning the development and evaluation of programmes and services for older adults. She was recently selected by the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing as one of 50 world leaders working to transform the world to be a better place in which to grow older. Martha C. Bial, PhD, is a Faculty Research Scholar at the Ravazzin Center on Aging at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service in New York City, USA. She teaches social policy and social work practice with older adults and their families. She represents the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) at the United Nations and is an officer of the NGO Committee on Ageing in New York. She was a practitioner, supervisor and consultant in the field of ageing for 25 years. Nikolai Botev retired from UNFPA, where he worked in various advisory and management capacities, including as Director of the Office for Central Asia. Prior to that, he was with UNECE (inter alia as Manager of a project on ageing and acting Chief of PAU). Research interests include population and public policy, population ageing and intergenerational relations, inter-group relations, etc. Tine Buffel is Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology at the University of Manchester, UK, where she leads the Manchester Urban Ageing Research ix

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Group. Issues of inequality, ageing in place, and underlying processes of spatial and social exclusion in later life have been the primary focus of her research activities. She has published widely on the topic of developing age-friendly cities. Robin C. Fenley is Adjunct Professor of Social Policy at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service in New York City, USA. A social gerontologist at community and governmental levels, she co-led NYC’s first informal caregiver survey and developed programmes for dementia, caregiving, elder abuse prevention, long-term care. She chairs the NY Committee on Ageing Subcommittee on Older Women, is a member of the International Association of Gerontology & Geriatrics and INPEA, and chaired New York’s 2022 UN International Day of Older Persons. Julia Ferre is Social Affairs Officer, Programme on Ageing Section at UN DESA, with over 15 years of experience working at the regional and international levels in diverse areas of international development. In her current role, she supports Member States and intergovernmental bodies within the United Nations in the implementation of plans and recommendations on older persons and population ageing, as well as in mainstreaming population ageing and integrating issues of relevance to older persons in the implementation of development frameworks. Poliana Fialho de Carvalho is a doctoral research student at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil. She holds a Masters degree in Public Health. Her research focues on health and care for older people in Brazil. Marvin Formosa is Professor of Gerontology at the Department of Gerontology and Dementia Studies, Faculty for Social Wellbeing, University of Malta. He received a PhD in Gerontology from the University of Bristol. He is Director of the International Institute on Ageing United Nations – Malta (INIA), Chairperson of the National Commission for Active Ageing and Rector’s Delegate for the University of the Third Age, and Malta’s Country Team Leader for the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Krzysztof Hagemejer is an economist and Honorary Professor at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany, teaching economics and financing of social protection. As an independent consultant he is involved in social protection projects in Europe. Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia. Formerly, he had worked for more than 20 years at the Social Security Department of the International Labour Office. He is the author and co-author of numerous papers and books on social security. Sarah Harper CBE  is Clore Professor of Gerontology at the University of

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Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, UK. She advises the UK government on ageing issues and was appointed a CBE for services to Demography in 2018. She has a background in anthropology and population studies. Her current research on demographic change addresses two broad questions: the impact of falling fertility and increasing life expectancy, and the interaction of population change with the environment.  Frank Hoffer, PhD in Economics, is Non-Executive Director of the Global Labour University Online Academy. He was Labour Attaché at the German Embassy in Moscow before joining the Bureau for Workers’ Activities of the International Labour Organization where he participated in tripartite negotiations at International Labour Conferences including the adoption of the Social Protection Floors Recommendations. From 2017 to 2020 he was Executive Director of ACT, a joint initiative of the Global Trade Union Federation of Garment Workers and major global fashion companies promoting industry-wide collective bargaining. Norah Keating is Professor of Social Gerontology who undertakes global research and policy development focused on contexts of ageing. She has appointments at Stirling University (UK), North-West University (South Africa) and University of Alberta (Canada) and is Director of Global Social Issues on Ageing, International Association on Gerontology and Geriatrics. Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen is Professor of Social Sustainability and Welfare Policies at the Department of Social Sciences, LUT University, Finland. She specializes in research on life-courses, work and retirement, welfare policies and research methods. Recently, she explored especially the twin digital and demographic transitions in a social sustainability perspective. Teppo Kröger is Professor of Social and Public Policy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care (CoE AgeCare). He has analysed care systems from local, national and international perspectives and drafted the concepts of welfare municipality, weak universalism, dedomestication, demographic panic, care capital and care poverty. Giovanni Lamura leads the Centre for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing at INRCA IRCCS, Italy’s National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing. He graduated in economics, achieved a PhD in ‘Life course and social policy’ (University of Bremen, Germany), and was visiting fellow at University of Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany) and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy & Research (Austria). His research interests are in international research on family and long-term care, migrant care work and interdisciplinary research on ageing.

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Kai Leichsenring is Executive Director of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, affiliated to the United Nations in Vienna, Austria. He specialized in comparative and applied social research and policy consultancy focusing on ageing, health and long-term care. Apart from coordinating many national and European R&D projects he collaborated with regional and national governments, and international agencies, including the UNECE Standing Working Group on Ageing. Peter Lloyd-Sherlock is Affiliated Professor at the Institute of Public Health, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. His research mainly focuses on health and social care for older people in low- and middle-income countries. Claudia Mahler is the Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (since 2020). She has been a senior researcher in the field of economic, social and cultural rights for the German Institute for Human Rights since 2010, conducted research at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Potsdam and worked as a lecturer and consultant in the field of human rights law. Jasmine A. Manalel is Senior Research Associate at the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College in New York City, USA. She is a developmental psychologist whose research interests include close relationships and health across the lifespan, informal caregiving, and ageing with HIV/AIDS. She is a member of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatics’ United Nations team. Anne Meissner is Professor of Nursing and Care Organization at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. She is an experienced scientist and practician in nursing and care with a demonstrated history of clinical experience, academic research, higher education, and in the health care industry. Laura Naegele leads the junior research group ‘Competence management of older workers in digitized learning environments (BeKomIng Digital)’ at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Bonn, Germany. Her research focuses on age-management measurements, competence development of ageing workforces, digital learning environments and ageism in the labour market. Henk Nies is Endowed Professor of Policy and Organisation Development in Long-term Care at the Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He graduated in Psychogerontology with a thesis on ‘Policy research in care for older people’. For a large part of his career, he was on the Executive Board of Vilans, the Netherlands’ Centre of Expertise for Long-term Care. His research

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interests are care workers, quality management, integrated care, the cooperation of formal and informal carers, and support for people with dementia. Alexander Peine is Professor of Culture, Innovation and Communication at the Open University of The Netherlands. His research explores the many intersections between ageing, the challenges it allegedly poses for care and health systems, and technological change, including the push towards more interactive and ‘smarter’ technologies. In his research, he has combined approaches from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with social and critical gerontology to develop the concept of the co-constitution of ageing and technology. Michał Polakowski is Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. His research interests include political economy of the welfare state, old-age pensions, childcare, labour market policy and migration. Anette Scoppetta is Deputy Director of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna, Austria. Her expertise comprises labour market and social policies and, in more detail, social inclusion, social change processes, employment partnerships, social innovation and regional economic development. As senior researcher, she has led and contributed to many Austrian and European projects, especially supporting EU-level policy making in employment. Alexandre Sidorenko is Senior Advisor at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna, Austria. He is an expert in national and international policy on ageing. For more than 20 years he led the United Nations Programme on Ageing. Oxana Sinyavskaya is Deputy Director of the Institute for Social Policy at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, located in Moscow, Russia. Her research interests include well-being in old age, active ageing, pension reforms and retirement behaviour, long-term care and family policies. She consulted for both national and international organizations on the issues of active ageing and social policies in ageing societies, and estimated the Active Ageing Index in Russia and Kazakhstan. Clemens Tesch-Römer is Director of the German Centre of Gerontology, Berlin (DZA), Germany, and Adjunct Professor for Psychology at the Free University of Berlin. Research interests include social integration and societal participation in the second half of life, ageism, theoretical conceptions of the life-course, successful ageing and social inequality. Virpi Timonen is Professor of Health and Social Services Research at the University of Helsinki. Finland. Her work has focused on the sociology of

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ageing and social policies as they are unfolding in ageing societies. She has a particular interest in intergenerational relationships, multi-generational families, and social constructions of age, generations and older adults in both policy and micro-level contexts of families and care settings. Maria Varlamova, based at the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland, is an expert in social analysis and public policy, specializing in population ageing research. She has extensive experience in analysing human capital quality, intergenerational relationships and social protection. Currently a doctoral candidate at Jagiellonian University, she is furthering her research into ageing and labour market inequalities. She collaborates with the WHO and UNECE, contributing to the development of indicators, metadata and guidelines for active and healthy ageing and age-friendly cities and communities.  Anna Wanka is Research Group Leader at the Department of Sociology and the Department of Educational Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany. She is a sociologist and critical gerontologist interested in the social construction of age. Her areas of expertise comprise the social practices of un/ doing age, life-course transitions, retirement and the re/production of social inequalities across the life-course, ageing and technologies, age-friendly cities and communities, ageing migrants and lifelong learning. Yanan Zhang has a PhD in Economics and is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, UK. She conducts research on the costs of social care in terms of economy, health and well-being, and develops evidence frames for positive interventions in support of population ageing. She has a special interest in China. 

Foreword

It is my great pleasure to warmly welcome this important book, which sets out a comprehensive research agenda for ageing and social policy. The authors perform a valuable task for all of us who seek not only to research the topic of ageing but also to transform the prospects for later life. The journey to this point has been a long one, particularly the constant struggle to ensure that policy makers recognize the importance of ageing research as a foundation for action, and therefore devote sufficient resources to it. Having taken an active part, with Sasha (Alexandre) Sidorenko, in the global debates which led to the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and the Research Agenda on Ageing for the Twenty-first Century; and, with Kai Leichsenring, in various European ageing research endeavours, I well appreciate both the wealth of knowledge they brought to this book project, and their strong commitment to ensuring that there is sufficient national and international support for ageing research to enable the world to respond successfully to the unprecedented demographic challenges it faces. Of course, this is contested terrain, and in contrast to the optimistic outlook of this book, some political and media commentators persistently advance a gloom-laden ‘burden of ageing’ perspective. In the end the surest way to rebut such fabrications is with robust research. As the editors acknowledge, ageing is also a constantly moving target. Whereas the classic gerontological texts regarded older people (or more often ‘the elderly’) as merely passive participants, usually frail and vulnerable, today ageing research is more often practised as a process which involves them in more active roles – from consultants to co-producers. There are also new ageing research agendas emerging regularly, such as digital inclusion and exclusion, intersectionality and sustainability. Perhaps most exciting and path-breaking of all, in terms of its potential to advance the global goal of healthy ageing for all, is the fusion of biogerontological and social science research – what I have labelled the ‘new science of ageing’. As the editors recognize, it is vital for

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ageing research to be agile enough to respond to new challenges and this, in turn, demands equal agility from research funders. The expert authors the editors have assembled, the wide variety of topics they address, and the logical structure of the book, building towards a specific agenda for research on ageing and social policy, make for a highly significant contribution to gerontology. This contribution is further enhanced by the updating of the horizontal life-course model originated in the mid-1980s by the late, great US gerontologists Matilda and Jack Riley, to provide a framework for organizing social policy and related research. The proposed agenda itself, including active ageing, ageism, rights, digital society, long-term care, intergenerational equity, co-design and international governmental strategies, is sufficient to keep researchers in this field busy for the next decade. In addition, a major cross-cutting aspect of ageing and social policy, already deeply embedded, is inequality, both within and between nations. It is vital that this dimension features in all topics on the proposed agenda. Equally important, to ensure that research matches the optimistic vision of age integration proposed here, is the encouragement of more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. As ageing never corresponds to a single scientific discipline, it follows that the combination of disciplinary perspectives is likely to deliver the most useful insights. Finally, understanding the meanings of ageing and old age, their biological, social and cultural constructions, is essential to the production of effective social policy responses, as well as to the extension of human knowledge. This valuable addition to the literature on ageing and social policy should become a lasting point of reference for researchers. I hope that it will also be influential in research funding circles. Alan Walker Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology University of Sheffield, UK

Preface

Ageing is definitely no longer just a ‘first world issue’. What was a footnote in the twentieth century is on its way to becoming a dominant theme in the twenty-first century.1

This 2002 forecast has been confirmed during the decades since the Second World Assembly on Ageing. The demographic transformation of society towards significantly higher shares of older persons is now considered universal and most likely irreversible. For several decades population ageing has been perceived as a threat to economic growth and societal development, as well as a challenge to social policy. Increasingly, population ageing is now seen as an opportunity. The focus of research and policy discourse has shifted to exploring and exploiting opportunities of growing longevity, such as the extended working life of older workers, the investment power of retirement savings, and the ability of the ‘silver economy’ to stimulate growth and maintain well-being. All of these opportunities have the potential to become driving forces for the development of mature societies for all ages. To realize the potential of longevity, timely, sustainable and evidence-informed policy responses must be thoughtfully designed and persistently pursued. Evidence to inform social policy on ageing and longevity needs to be contextually specific, validated and focused. Research and data collection have a well-established application: ‘to serve as instruments for formulating, implementing and evaluating policies and programmes to address the implications of the population ageing for development, as well as for the needs of older persons’. This 40-year-old formulation of the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing represents a desirable but still distant goal. Resources for research and development are never considered sufficient. The lack of resources is, however, particularly felt in the field of social research. Therefore, to secure the continuum of research from the discovery of new knowledge to its translation and application, the mobilization and concentration of resources is necessary. Such focused efforts can be framed and directed xvii

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through an agreed framework such as a research agenda. That is what this volume is trying to stimulate. An exploration under one cover of the universe of challenges and opportunities of population and individual ageing is inevitably sketchy and incomplete. Among the missing themes of the book are several issues of population and individual ageing, cross-regional comparisons of policy responses, and a rigorous analysis of the role of various stakeholders. The editors of the book bear the primary responsibility for shortcomings and omissions. Omissions are partly due to the size of the printed book, which limits the range of topics and authors. Moreover, the diversity and dynamics of research on ageing related to policy makes any attempt to generalize the accumulated knowledge and arrive at universal conclusions and recommendations a challenge. This book therefore sets out to trigger a continuous process by proposing a research agenda on ageing designed to inform and stimulate social policy responses to ageing and longevity. The authors and editors are confident that the proposed outline will serve as a basis for subsequent discussions, exchanges and research projects to support inclusive social policy responses to ageing. Another important task pursued by this book is to bridge the gap between research and policy – two often isolated processes – and promote a dialogue between all major stakeholders of action on ageing: researchers, policy makers in legislation and government, as well as representatives of civil society and social partners.

Note 1.

Statement by Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Report of the Second World Assembly on Ageing, Madrid, 8–12 April 2002. A/CONF.197/9. United Nations, New York, 2002, p. 66.

PART I Introduction

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Introduction: why do we need a research agenda for ageing and social policy in the 21st century?

Kai Leichsenring and Alexandre Sidorenko

Ageing as a key challenge and opportunity Population ageing and rising individual longevity have been identified as the key challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. As stated in the Introduction to the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA), “population ageing is a universal force that has the power to shape the future as much as globalization” (United Nations/UN, 2002a, paragraph 15). During the 40 years since the first World Assembly on Ageing, held in Vienna, Austria, in 1982 (UN, 1982), and particularly since the Second World Assembly on Ageing (UN, 2002b), we have witnessed an unprecedented transformation. Rising longevity paired with various demographic, environmental, socio-economic and cultural phenomena continue to significantly impact social security systems, employment, education and social welfare in general. Lower birth rates, increasing mobility and urbanisation, more differentiated family patterns, including rising labour participation rates of women, have drawn the attention of policymakers, social partners and interest organisations as well as researchers in multiple disciplines to learn more about these extraordinary developments in human history. When population pyramids are turned upside down it is obvious that new concepts and approaches are needed to adjust society and individual life-courses to new structures and dynamics. Such an adjustment requires innovative social policy frameworks to ensure the resilience of the social fabric, including intra- and intergenerational contracts and solidarity.

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A brief history of international policy responses to ageing The national policy responses to population and individual ageing have been shaped quite significantly by policy documents on ageing that have been developed and promoted at international level. Most prominent among these documents are the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing (VIPAA) (UN, 1982), the United Nations Principles for Older Persons (UN, 1991), the MIPAA, and the substantive elaborations on active and healthy ageing shaped by the World Health Organization (WHO). VIPAA is the first in a list of international consensus policy documents on ageing developed in UN fora. It was the main outcome of the first World Assembly on Ageing held in Vienna, Austria, in 1982. “The primary aims” of VIPAA were “to strengthen the capacities of countries to deal effectively with the ageing of their populations and with the special concerns and needs of their elderly, and to promote an appropriate international response to the issues of ageing …” (UN, 1982, paragraph 2). To reach these aims, 62 recommendations for national action were formulated in seven “areas of concern to ageing individuals”: health and nutrition; protection of elderly consumers; housing and environment; family; social welfare; income security and employment; and education. VIPAA also proposed three areas of international cooperation in advancing policies and programmes on ageing: data collection and analysis; training and education; and research. The United Nations Principles for Older Persons were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1991 (UN, 1991). The Principles aspired “to add life to the years that have been added to life” by promoting independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment and dignity of older citizens. For more than 30 years these Principles have served as a foundation for developing national legislation on ageing and older persons around the world. In 2002, 20 years after the Vienna Assembly, the Second World Assembly on Ageing was convened by the UN in Madrid, Spain. The Second World Assembly adopted the MIPAA with its recommendations for policy action in three priority directions: older persons and development; advancing health and wellbeing into old age; and ensuring enabling and supportive environments. The most significant achievement of the Second World Assembly and its main outcome, MIPAA, is that they complemented the traditional humanitarian approach of addressing the needs of older persons with a developmental approach to population and individual ageing.

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Today, MIPAA remains the key international framework for policy action on ageing around the world. Significant disparities in population and individual ageing have prompted the United Nations to develop regional implementation strategies for the countries in Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia. For Africa, the African Union Policy Framework and Plan of Action on Ageing was adopted by the member countries of the African Union (UN, 2003). The WHO has developed several policy frameworks on ageing and health: the strategic framework for active ageing (WHO, 2002), the report promoting age-friendly primary healthcare (WHO, 2004), the guide to engage cities to become more age-friendly (WHO, 2007), and, more recently, the Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health (WHO, 2017). The most influential contribution of WHO to promoting policies on ageing has been its strategic Framework for active ageing. The Framework was developed in 2002 as a contribution to the Second World Assembly on Ageing and, along with MIPAA, has guided actions in three pillars: health, participation and security. The most recent WHO document, the Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health, was endorsed by the sixty-ninth World Health Assembly in 2016 (UN, 2015). It outlines an agenda for action during the process of reaching the Sustainable Development Goals and is being spearheaded during the Decade of Healthy Ageing 2020–2030. Both VIPAA and MIPAA contain significant elaborations devoted to scientific research and evidence-informed policy on ageing. According to the VIPAA, research and data collection are to serve as tools for formulating, evaluating and implementing policies and programmes to address the implications of population ageing for development, as well as for the needs of older people (UN, 2002a, paragraph 84). The studies of social, economic and health aspects of ageing have to include comparative, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches. The VIPAA emphasises the need of “the continuum of research from the discovery of new knowledge to its vigorous and more rapid application and transfer of technological knowledge with due consideration of cultural and social diversity” (UN, 2002a, paragraph 85). MIPAA underscores the critical role of age- and gender-sensitive data collection and analysis to inform effective policy development. Data collection and analysis for policy planning, monitoring and evaluation are crucial elements of the national implementation of the MIPAA’s recommendations. Priorities for international cooperation on ageing include the exchange of researchers

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and research findings and data collection to support policy and programme development. According to MIPAA, comprehensive, diversified and specialised research on ageing should be encouraged and advanced in all countries, especially in developing countries. Not surprisingly, the research priorities differ between the two international plans of action separated by 20 years. While the VIPAA emphasises fundamental “biological, mental and social fields” of research, the MIPAA focuses on applied studies of ageing aimed at providing translatable evidence for policy action. The WHO policy framework on active ageing highlights several determinants of active ageing and calls for “more research to clarify and specify the role of each determinant, as well as the interaction between determinants, in the active ageing process” (WHO, 2002). The WHO framework also appeals for collaborative work of “international agencies, countries and regions … to develop a relevant research agenda for active ageing” and to “involve older people in efforts to develop research agendas on active ageing, both as advisors and as investigators”. The research component of the WHO Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health is set out in one of its five strategic objectives “improving measurement, monitoring and research for healthy ageing” (Strategic objective 5). This objective contains measures for building an evidence base for policy actions, “which can ensure that all actions have the intended impacts, are equity-oriented and cost-effective” (WHO, 2017, paragraph 26) and underlines the importance of “more research and evidence on age-related issues, trends and distributions, and on what can be done to promote Healthy Ageing across the life course”. Strategic objective 5 also contains a set of basic research questions to be addressed in the development of policy options. The detailing strategic objectives of the Strategy contain the specific tasks to be fulfilled for reaching Strategic objective 5: agree on ways to measure, analyse, describe and monitor Healthy Ageing; strengthen research capacities and incentives for innovation; and research and synthesise evidence on Healthy Ageing. During the first five years of the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health (2016–20), two goals were to be reached: first, five years of evidence-based action to maximise functional ability that reaches every person; and second, by 2020, establish evidence and partnerships necessary to support a Decade of Healthy Ageing from 2020 to

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2030. The research component of the Global Strategy is clearly visible in the formulation of these goals. As a key initiative to implement the Global Strategy, the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2020–2030 promotes actions in four areas : “changing how we think, feel and act towards age and ageing; developing communities in ways that foster the abilities of older people; delivering person centered integrated care and primary health services responsive to older people; and providing older people who need it with access to long-term care” (WHO, 2020). One of the enablers driving the four areas of action, “[strengthening] data research and innovation to accelerate implementation”, reaffirms the evidence-based foundation of the Decade.

Linking research and policy on ageing Numerous references in international policy frameworks on ageing underline the essential role of research in action on ageing. In order to put into practice the potential synergies between research and policy, it is necessary to establish specific links between the actions recommended in policy documents and research efforts to collect, analyse and translate the research findings to inform recommended policy actions. An attempt to establish such links between research and policy was undertaken during the preparations for the Second World Assembly on Ageing through the development of a research agenda on ageing. The Research Agenda on Ageing for the Twenty-First Century (RAA-21) was a joint project of the United Nations Programme on Ageing (UNPoA) and the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG). RAA-21 was developed through a series of expert consultations convened in 1999–2000. In April 2002, RAA-21 was endorsed by the Valencia Forum of Researchers and Practitioners on Ageing (IAGG, 2002) and presented at the Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid, Spain. The United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution 57/177 in 2002, welcomed the adoption by the Valencia Forum of the Research Agenda on Ageing for the Twenty-First Century, and in 2005, the General Assembly called upon governments to consult and utilise the Research Agenda on Ageing as a tool for strengthening national capacity on ageing (General Assembly resolution 60/135). In 2005, during the Eighteenth Congress of IAGG, the UNPoA and IAGG convened an expert workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to review and update RAA-21. The final version of RAA-21 was published in 2007 (UN and IAGG, 2007).

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RAA-21 was developed to support the implementation of the MIPAA and also to encourage researchers to pursue studies in policy-related areas where the findings may have practical and realistic applications for action on ageing. RAA-21 identifies major priorities for research exploration: • Priority 1: Relationships of population ageing and socio-economic development • Priority 2: Current practices and options for maintaining material security in old age • Priority 3: Changing family structures, intergenerational transfer systems and emergent family and institutional dynamics • Priority 4: Determinants of healthy ageing • Priority 5: Basic biological mechanisms and age-associated diseases • Priority 6: Quality of Life and ageing in diverse cultural, socio-economic and environmental situations. RAA-21 also proposes 12 critical research areas with specific topics for policy-related research and data collection. The major priorities and critical research areas of RAA-21 are related to the priority directions of the MIPAA. RAA-21 also contains key methodological issues and proposals for implementation. RAA-21 is not the sole attempt to develop a policy-linked research agenda on ageing. For example, in 2001, a global research agenda was developed by an international “Panel on a Research Agenda and New Data for an Aging World”, which was convened by the National Academies of the USA and approved by the Governing Board of the US National Research Council (National Research Council, 2001). The agenda was developed to assist countries “to improve their adaptations to population aging”. The Panel developed several recommendations to promote “effective cross-national research” and “generation of policy-relevant data” and also identified five research domains “in which new international data are required to inform policy making in the coming decades”: • • • • •

Work and retirement Savings and wealth Family structure and intergenerational transfers Health and disability Well-being.

Although RAA-21 is not the only research agenda on ageing, its unique status is underscored by the fact that RAA-21 provides specific links between the

INTRODUCTION

9

established international policy documents on ageing, in particular MIPAA, and research directions to inform the implementation of its declaration. More recently, a conceptual framework and agenda to address the action items of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing in scientific research was proposed (Keating, 2022; see also Chapter 3 of this book). This research agenda is based on the core concepts of environments, life-courses and wellbeing. Research and innovation is one of the actions aimed at achieving the key political and strategic objectives of the European Union (EU) (European Union, n.d.). Action in research and innovation is being promoted by the European Commission (EC) in several research areas (European Commission, n.d.). The issues of ageing are most pronounced in the research area “Health”. Within this research area, one of the key areas of research is “Human development and ageing”. This key research area indicates the following topics for research and innovation: determining the biomarkers of ageing; understanding the developmental processes of long-lived organisms throughout their lives; studying the immune system in old age; establishing a roadmap on ageing research in Europe; increasing the participation of older persons in clinical trials; studying determinants of ageing and longevity and the role of environment; and building a consensus definition of frailty. In the current decade, the EU has sponsored various research and innovation programmes and projects that include issues of ageing. These programmes and projects – some of them are briefly described below – aimed at strengthening coordination, collaboration and alignment of policy-related research on ageing among the EU member states. Horizon 2020 was the major EU funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of nearly €80 billion for 2014–20 (Horizon 2020, 2014). Horizon 2020 has formulated several Societal Challenges; within one of these challenges, Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing, about €7.5 billion was to be invested in health research and innovation in order to achieve better health for all and to keep older people active and independent for longer; support the development of new, safer and more effective interventions; and contribute to the sustainability of health and care systems (European Union, n.d.). During the first four years of the Horizon 2020 (2014–17), the following research and innovations were prioritised for addressing this Societal Challenge: causes and mechanisms underlying health, healthy ageing and disease; monitoring of health and prevention, detection, treatment and management of disease; support for older persons to remain active and healthy; new models and tools for health and care delivery. The evaluation of the entire

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programme is still ongoing, while the next Framework Programme Research has already started in 2020 under the title “Horizon Europe”. FUTUREAGE was a two-year (2009–11) project devoted to producing a European Roadmap for future research on ageing with the aim to “enable Europe to respond successfully to the unprecedented demographic challenges it faces” (FUTUREAGE, 2011). Active ageing has been identified as the central multidisciplinary theme of the Roadmap developed by FUTUREAGE. The elaboration of the Roadmap was framed within the four thematic workstreams that guided the elaboration of the Roadmap: biogerontology; social and economic resources; healthy ageing; and environments of ageing. Seven research themes have been identified as key topics for future European research: • • • • • • •

Healthy Ageing for More Life in Years Maintaining and Regaining Mental Capacity Inclusion and Participation in the Community and in the Labour Market Guaranteeing the Quality and Sustainability of Social Protection Systems Ageing Well at Home and in Community Environments Unequal Ageing and Age-Related Inequalities Biogerontology: from Mechanisms to Interventions.

The project “Mobilising the potential of active ageing in Europe” (MoPAct) was implemented in 2013–16 as a successor to the FUTUREAGE project. Based on the deliberations of the FUTUREAGE, MoPAct strived “to provide the research and practical evidence upon which Europe can begin to make longevity an asset for social and economic development”. The core theme of MoPAct, realising active and healthy ageing as an asset, was explored within ten research fields (MoPAct, 2017): • • • • • • • • • •

Active and healthy ageing as an asset Biogerontology Built and technological environment Economic consequences of ageing Enhancing active citizenship European Active Ageing Resource Extending working lives Health and well-being Pension systems, savings and financial education Social support and long-term care.

COST (the European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding scheme for the creation of COST Actions – research networks for collabo-

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ration among scientists across Europe and beyond (COST, n.d.). Since 1971, COST has received EU funding under the various Research and Innovation Framework Programmes, such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. Among 294 Cost Actions (as of 2019), several are directly related to ageing, with the prevalence of biomedical aspects. “Social Innovation on active and healthy ageing for sustainable economic growth” (SIforAGE) was a European project (2012–16) that aimed to promote “the active participation of the elderly in all facets of society through a wide range of communication tools” (SIforAGE, 2016). The objectives of SIforAGE were more applied in nature: disseminating scientific knowledge in society, undertaking advocacy activities and engaging civil society organisations, other societal actors, including end-users in shaping the research projects dealing with active and healthy ageing. The activities of SIforAGE were undertaken for mutual engagement of researchers and policy practitioners in six priority areas related to five key issues for active and healthy ageing (SIforAGE, 2016): • • • • • •

Healthy ageing for healthier living years Mental capacity and Alzheimer’s Active participation and inclusion in society Inequalities associated with ageing Social innovation in community partnerships for active and healthy ageing Services and technologies for better ageing at home.

The Joint Programming Initiative “More Years Better Lives” (JPI MYBL) is one of the ten Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs) currently led by the EU member states (ERA-LEARN, n.d.). The JPIs were launched by the EC in 2008 with the aim to address major societal challenges. JPI MYBL promotes research and enhances coordination and collaboration between national and international research programmes related to demographic change in 17 countries from within and outside of Europe participating in the JPI MYBL (JPI MYBL, n.d.). The Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) was elaborated within this JPI in 2014 “to help all participating countries, and other research funders to prioritise and design research activity related to demographic change” (JPI MYBL, 2014). This research agenda defines priorities for research and policymaking in four domains of demographic impact on society: Quality of Life and Health; Economic and Social Production; Governance and Institutions; and

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Sustainability of Welfare in the EU. The SRA has identified 11 research topics as priority issues to be addressed in the short and medium term: • • • • • • • • • • •

Quality of life, wellbeing and health Learning for later life Social and economic production Participation Ageing and place A new labour market Integrating policy Inclusion and equity Welfare models Technology for living Research infrastructure.

All these initiatives, agendas and priorities have been developed under different conditions, focusing on different regional and political realities, and with different scopes. This is also true for the agenda proposed by the authors of this book and should be kept in mind when reading the individual chapters and the resulting proposals of research areas and questions listed in the final chapter. In the following section we shall therefore explain our rationale and the context in which our proposals have matured.

Towards a research agenda on ageing in a changing and unstable world Research on ageing and social policy had for a long time been centred on issues of the sustainability of pensions and healthcare systems. Over the past decades, the extension of working lives, measures to address rising needs of long-term care and to enhance the quality of life of older people have emerged, together with new concepts and directions of multidisciplinary research. First, the Active and Healthy Ageing concept has promoted a more proactive approach of social policies to population and individual ageing. Second, and partly connected, social and political participation of older people has gained ground as they became conceived not only as passive receivers of benefits and services, but also as active citizens to be included in society and exercise their agency. New research approaches also look at older people as co-producers of services rather than mere customers of the “silver economy”. However, these concepts and research efforts often put aside those groups of older people that require support in terms of health and social care.1 The COVID-19 pandemic

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and the war in Ukraine have drawn attention to older people as the main victims of emergencies, who are too often overlooked in epidemiological and humanitarian efforts. Research on the realisation of individual potential, considering older people’s own values and needs, is still in the primary stages of creating a necessary solid empirical basis. This is also because older people as a multidimensional and highly differentiated cluster of society have been progressively questioned as a uniform social group of its own, in particular regarding its apposite age boundaries delineated by chronological age. Ageism, including stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination of people based on their age, has thus become an important area of research regarding social policies that need to be analysed in terms of potential structural discrimination issues, let alone the existing and yet aggravating inequalities among and between age groups that are partly even generated and reproduced by social security schemes. Third, and in concomitance to these findings, there is a general tendency to conceive ageing research based on a life-course approach that focuses on employment, social participation, learning, volunteering, caring and other hitherto unpaid activities over the entire lifespan and related cumulated inequalities due to education, gendered employment and payment patterns, and employment-focused social security schemes. Corresponding research therefore scrutinises related reforms of social security systems that would be better suited to capture the new life risks during transition phases prompted by specific life events. In addition, strong interlinkages of ageing issues are emerging with the other key challenges of society in the 21st century, namely, climate change and digitalisation, natural and man-made disasters that will require appropriate policy responses as they impact ageing and social policies while being influenced by population ageing itself. Globalisation brings forth a new set of actors, institutions and stakeholders that frame the social construction of ageing and set the mainstreaming ageing discourse (UNECE, 2021). In this context, also the geographical perspective needs to be mentioned as it adds to the vast variety of population ageing and related socio-political phenomena, for example the situation in China or other regions with developments of “rapid ageing”. Although not explicitly addressed in this book, individual chapters refer to selected national and regional specificities highlighting these differences. As a corollary, future research on ageing and social policy will be inspired by a wide variety of stakeholders, ranging from older people and their (non-governmental) interest organisations to state actors and commercial enterprises with multiple perspectives and interests. Ageing research needs to

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assess these interests and expectations at various levels, with interdisciplinary approaches covering both qualitative policy analysis and quantitative methods to produce evidence that may guide policymaking at national, regional and, at best, global levels, for example, by underpinning initiatives of intergovernmental organisations. This book therefore sets out to gather these multiple perspectives and shed light on selected areas of ageing that may shape a future research agenda.

Structure of the book The book is divided into five parts. Following the first part with the introductory Chapter 1, the second part will assess challenges and opportunities of ageing in the 21st century in a global perspective. Authors with a background in international research gauge the need for social policies to adapt to population ageing in the context of demographic change in different regions of the world from a perspective on policymaking in the international context. In Chapter 2, Sarah Harper and Yanan Zhang challenge the myth of the demographic deficit. They provide evidence for the opportunities of rising longevity and dynamic changes in health from a European and Asian perspective – these opportunities, however, need to be underpinned by social policies that are reframed in an age-inclusive manner and empower the wider community through intergenerational programmes. Norah Keating, Virpi Timonen and Tine Buffel contribute in Chapter 3 to the social policy agenda around the challenges of population ageing by a critical analysis of policy documents at international level that have shaped the discourse on ageing since the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing. They argue for the additional need to create knowledge and social policies to strengthen measurement of near-environments of families and resilient communities to enhance healthy ageing. The third part consists of contributions by scholars that outline research needs from various scientific perspectives. Based on multidisciplinary and cross-country insights, latest trends in gerontological, sociological, psychological, economic and health services research provide an overview of the state of the art and proposals for further research needed.

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In Chapter 4, Clemens Tesch-Röemer and Liat Ayalon discuss cultural and societal patterns of age-related discrimination and their impact on social and public policies. They critically analyse existing measures to combat ageism and propose research to expand the evidence base, which is still rather scarce in this area. In Chapter 5 Oxana Sinyavskaya provides a systematic analysis of the active ageing concept that has shaped social policies around ageing over the past decades. Synthesising scientific and political perspectives, she reveals the related needs for research and further policy development. In the ensuing Chapter 6, Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen and Marvin Formosa take a slightly different perspective on active ageing in the light of life-course research, that is, how activities and experiences in a person’s life trigger long-term effects, thereby enabling active ageing. This approach will need to shape future social research and policies that give a more balanced attention to active ageing by preventive and flexible support across the life-course. In Chapter 7 Anette Scoppetta, Laura Naegele and Maria Varlamova explore the transformation of labour markets in the context of digitalisation processes and its impact on the ageing workforce. Both at company level and through labour market policies, they argue, it is necessary to create age-appropriate and age-inclusive work and learning environments that enable lifelong learning and extended working lives – with ample space for research to provide evidence on what works under which circumstances. Chapter 8 is also dedicated to the consequences of the digital transformation. By addressing the general opportunities and caveats of technological innovation as alleged solution to challenges of population ageing, Alexander Peine, Anne Meissner and Anna Wanka critically assess related policies and confront these with the actual knowledge about the use and non-use of digital devices by older people to deduct future research questions. Chapter 9 by Toni Antonucci, Jasmine Manalel, Robin Fenley and Martha Bial highlights the consequences of changing social relations, especially family relations, throughout life and how social policies should be designed to better support families in coping with salient challenges, namely, in the context of migration and ageing-related mental health issues, that need to be tackled by appropriate social policies and research. The ensuing chapters deal with the impact of population ageing on health and social care systems that have become even more visible during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Peter Lloyd-Sherlock and Poliana Fialho de Carvalho plead, in Chapter 10, for a radically new approach in social and health policies

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and research under conditions of population ageing, not least after the experiences of the pandemic. In Chapter 11, Giovanni Lamura and Henk Nies offer an overview of the emerging issues in long-term care, which is still an underresearched field. Analysing both the supply and the demand side, the authors identify a vast number of challenges but also opportunities and solutions that should inform the emerging policies to enhance long-term care systems across the globe. Finally, Teppo Kröger takes a slightly different approach in Chapter 12 by looking at shifts in the division of care responsibilities between the public sector and families that can be observed in many countries. Based on empirical data regarding the coverage of long-term care services and facilities, the chapter highlights diverging trends within OECD countries. Further social policy research therefore needs to be based on a systematic and longitudinal collection of reliable and comparable international data about who gets what, how benefits and services are distributed between different population groups and who is left without support. The fourth part gathers views and assessments on the role of social policy research in the context of intergovernmental organisations and in the social dialogue between workers and employers with a view on population ageing. In Chapter 13, Nikolai Botev, Julia Ferre and Claudia Mahler analyse the role of intergovernmental organisations, in particular the UN system entities, which have been active in promoting and protecting the rights of individuals and/or addressing the causes and consequences of population ageing. The way intergovernmental actors use scientific research in their efforts for improving evidence-informed policymaking is scrutinised as a basis for the kind of future research needed as the nexus between research, policy and politics in the context of intergovernmental organisations. In Chapter 14, Krzysztof Hagemejer, Frank Hoffer and Michał Polakowski take a look at social policy research on the ageing workforce from the perspective of employees and employers. They argue that the traditional “tripartite consensus” about the role of social policies has been eroding. Given the financial pressures on welfare states and other challenges faced by an ageing workforce, they propose more research on how the currently perceived decline of social dialogue might be overcome by building on the considerable amount of knowledge generated by social partners. In the fifth and final part we outline a framework for future-oriented social policies on ageing in a life-course perspective. Based on this framework and by clustering and synthesising the various perspectives exhibited by the authors of this volume, we then present a substantial agenda for future research on ageing and social policies. The wide range of issues brought to the fore certainly needs

INTRODUCTION

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further debate and – in a global perspective – will need to be complemented by ample regional and thematic deliberations. For instance, demographic hot spots such as China and India, generational conflicts with respect to climate change, the general impact of climate change on ageing populations, or questions around transportation and mobility, housing and the built environment, conflicts about energy and water as well as education have not been tackled in this volume, but call for additional attention in the future, including potential consequences on social policies and related research.

Note 1.

Such biased response has been a typical feature of international policy action on ageing. Initially, in VIPAA, the emphasis was on the “areas of concern to ageing individuals”. MIPAA added the developmental dimension to ageing policy, and the active ageing policy framework attempted to further a balanced approach inclusive of both humanitarian and developmental measures. Yet in many places the preferred policy responses have shifted towards “productivist” approach.

References COST (n.d.). Growing ideas through networks, https://​www​.cost​.eu/​about/​about​-cost/​ Accessed on 2 November 2023. ERA-LEARN (n.d.). Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs), https://​www​.era​-learn​.eu/​ partnerships​-in​-a​-nutshell/​. Accessed 2 November 2023. European Commission (n.d.). EU research on human development and ageing, https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​info/​research​-and​-innovation/​research​-area/​health​-research​ -and​-innovation/​human​-development​-and​-ageing​_en. Accessed 2 November 2023. European Union (n.d.). Priorities and actions, https://​european​-union​.europa​.eu/​ priorities​-and​-actions​_en. Accessed 2 November 2023. FUTUREAGE (2011). A Roadmap for Ageing Research, https://​cordis​.europa​.eu/​ project/​id/​223679. Accessed 2 November 2023. Horizon 2020 (2014). Horizon 2020. Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing, https://​wayback​.archive​-it​.org/​12090/​20220124130848/​https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​ programmes/​horizon2020/​en/​h2020​-section/​health​-demographic​-change​-and​ -wellbeing. Accessed 2 November 2023. IAGG (2002). IAG Events & Initiatives: The Valencia Report, https://​www​.sfu​.ca/​iag/​ events/​valenciareport​.htm. Accessed 2 November 2023. JPI MYBL (n.d.). What is JPI MYBL?, https://​jp​-demographic​.eu/​background​-and​ -goals​-what​-is​-jpimybl/​ Accessed 2 November 2023. JPI MYBL (2014). Strategic Research Agenda, https://​jp​-demographic​.eu/​background​ -and​-goals​-what​-is​-jpimybl/​strategic​-research​-agenda​-sra/​. Accessed 2 November 2023.

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Keating, N. (2022). A research framework for the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030). European Journal of Ageing, 19, 775–87. MoPAct (2017). Research Fields, https://​mopact​.sites​.sheffield​.ac​.uk/​research​-fields. Accessed 2 November 2023. National Research Council (2001). Preparing for an Aging World: The Case for Cross-National Research, Panel on a Research Agenda and New Data for an Aging World, Committee on Population and Committee on National Statistics, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. SIforAGE (2016). Social Innovation on active and healthy ageing for sustainable economic growth, https://​cordis​.europa​.eu/​project/​id/​321482/​reporting. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN (1982). Report of the World Assembly on Aging, https://​www​.un​.org/​esa/​socdev/​ ageing/​documents/​Resources/​VIPEE​-English​.pdf. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN (1991). United Nations Principles for Older Persons. Retrieved on 15 September 2021 from https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​en/​p​rofessiona​linterest/​pages/​olderpersons​.aspx. Accessed November 2023. UN (2002a). “Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing”, in Report of the Second World Assembly on Ageing. Madrid. 8–12 April 2002. New York: United Nations, pp.  1–42, https://​documents​-dds​-ny​.un​.org/​doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​N02/​397/​51/​PDF/​ N0239751​.pdf​?OpenElement. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN (2002b). Second World Assembly on Ageing 2002, https://​www​.un​.org/​ development/​desa/​ageing/​madrid​-plan​-of​-action​-and​-its​-implementation/​second​ -world​-assembly​-on​-ageing​-2002​.html. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN (2003). Regional Implementation Strategies of the MIPAA, https://​www​.un​.org/​ development/​desa/​ageing/​madrid​-plan​-of​-action​-and​-its​-implementation/​regional​ -implementation​-strategies​-of​-the​-mipaa​.html. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN (2015). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, https://​sdgs​.un​.org/​goals. Accessed 2 November 2023. UN and IAGG (2007). Research Agenda on Ageing for the Twenty-first Century: 2007 Update. New York: UN Programme on Ageing and IAGG, https://​www​.un​.org/​ esa/​socdev/​ageing/​documents/​AgeingResearchAgenda​-6​.pdf. Accessed 2 November 2023. UNECE (2021). Guidelines for Mainstreaming Ageing. Geneva: United Nations. WHO (2002). Active Ageing – a Policy Framework. A Contribution of the World Health Organization to the Second United Nations World Assembly on Ageing, Madrid, Spain, April 2002. Geneva: World Health Organization. WHO (2004). Towards Age-Friendly Primary Health Care. Geneva: World Health Organization (Active ageing series). WHO (2007). Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide. Geneva: World Health Organization. WHO (2017). Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization. WHO (2020). Decade of Healthy Ageing: Baseline Report. Geneva: World Health Organization.

PART II Challenges and opportunities of ageing and social policies in the 21st century

2

Population ageing and the demographic deficit: exploring the second demographic dividend

Sarah Harper and Yanan Zhang

Introduction By 2022, there were around 1 billion adults aged 60 and over. This is projected to double by 2050, when there will for the first time be the same number of old (60+ years old) as of young (