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Demographic change and political participation – The European elections 2019
Are European elections dominated by older voters as a result of ageing electorates and low participation among younger people? Between 2008 and 2018 the population share of people aged 65 or old...
Behavioural aspects of retirement decisions
Pension systems are currently under radical reconstruction, and in most European countries there is a shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) schemes. The main rationale for...
Five ideas for a fast-changing world
Last Thursday, I had the privilege of attending the second annual meeting of The Longevity Forum, a relatively new player on the UK's ageing scene. As I noted last year when I attended ...
Millennials, Baby Boomers and Interstate Migration Trends in the United States
There has been a significant decrease in interstate migration in the United States in the last three decades. In a recent report by the Brookings Institution, Demographer William H. Frey used data ...
Never too old for the Nobel Prize
John Bannister Goodenough was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 for his pioneering work on lithium-ion batteries, much of which was carried out during his time as Head of the Inorg...
Barriers to employment after 50
Last year I wrote about the Baby Boomers and job loss. Since then, I have seen first-hand how the system works and how difficult it is for a professional to become re-employed once he/she is out ...
Biodiversity in the Anthropocene: threats to biodiversity in Southeast Asia
I have recently been working with the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) of the University of Oxford in a collaboration with the Institute of Population Ageing on a project highlighting ...
The Journey to Age Equality
On the 1st October the UN once again celebrated the annual International Day of Older Persons (IDOP) its 2019 theme aligning with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 focussing on pathwa...
Homelessness in the older population
Homelessness in the UK is on the rise, with the number of people without access to stable housing increasing at an alarming rate over the past 10 years. Loss of rented accommodation and rearrangeme...
Ageing and beauty
Throughout history, different societies have perceived people who are relatively young, with smooth skin and ‘well-proportioned’ bodies, as beautiful. In an era of population ageing, th...
The Asian Active Ageing Index: Findings for Indonesia and Thailand
The speed of population ageing is among the fastest in the member countries of the ASEAN[1], which is a matter of high significance for the social and health care services for older persons. Other ...
Inequalities in the Capabilities of the Elderly in Russia and Planned Extension of Research to China and the Koreas
This blog reports on a recent research report I completed for a project in Moscow on inequalities in medical care and health status of the elderly, as well as plans for the preparation of an equiva...
Technology, ageing, and the importance of including older adults in research
As the the world experiences a global demographic shift towards older adults, we are simultaneously experiencing an unprecedented expansion in technological innovation. Naturally, these two phenome...
Intergenerational fairness (again)
In 2018, the House of Lords appointed the Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision “to consider the long-term implications of Government policy on intergenerational fairne...
Ageing, fashion and health
Why doesn’t the fashion industry pay more attention to the needs and aspirations of older people? This has been a regular cry for as long as I have been studying the dynamics between ageing a...