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Student Debt and Intergenerational Fairness

When I started my undergraduate degree in 2003 tuition fees were capped at a mere £1,000 per year, though the Blair Government was already threatening to increase those fees threefold.  ...


Friendship: a guarantee for our successful ageing

“A friend is a treasure” says a popular proverb, and research has finally declared that it is true: engaging and investing in good relationship increase our psychological and physical w...


Successful ageing: is life a win-or-lose game?

A couple of years ago I attended a seminar in London. The presenter, a medical doctor, spoke about the importance of self-presentation in modern life and, in particular, he focused on how older peo...


Improving Capabilities of Birth Cohorts of the Elderly in Russia, 1990-2020

Readers of an OIPA blog will know that, the process of population ageing in the developed countries has been accompanied by advances in educational attainments, professional skills, income and weal...


How Republicans’ New Healthcare Plan Stacks Up Against Obamacare for Older Adults in the U.S.

From the moment Obamacare was passed in 2010, Republican lawmakers have been explicit in their intent to “repeal and replace” the expensive health care bill that sought to address gapin...


Sparking debate where science, policy and the public meet

Across our lives science is presenting us with new choices. Advances in reproductive medicine are confronting young people with moral choices unimagined by their parents. Our workplaces are being t...


Social care funding: a modest proposal

This weekend, we had a street party in my Oxford neighbourhood as part of the Great Get Together to honour the memory of Jo Cox, the MP who was killed last year.  For some of us with busy live...


What I’ve learnt about ageing from my grandparents

As I’m very close to finishing my PhD, I often think about my grandparents because they are the reason why I got here in the first place. They are both 83, both still working. Which is very u...


The Great Demographic Divide: Voting Patterns and Age

On Thursday the nation will, once again, head to the polling booths.  As a statistician and demographer (as well as a voter under the age of 35), the difference in voting patterns by age is on...


Open data or data dump?

“More than 714,000 young people have registered to vote since Theresa May called for a snap election”  begins a recent Independent article, before it goes on to speculate gently ab...


Is it possible to delay human ageing? The evolution of anti-ageing treatments

Is it possible to delay human ageing? Brian Hanley, the founder of Butterfly Sciences, a company that has developed gene therapies for ageing, strongly believes that delaying human ageing is alr...


Ageing Canadians: Census reveals more seniors than children living in Canada

The 2016 Canadian census results were released on May 3 and have revealed that there are a greater number of older adults than children, for the first time in census history.  Statistics Canad...


Long-term care needs for older persons and the youth bulge in sub-Saharan Africa: an interface with potential for growth ... (!?)

In the May 2017 newsletter of Ron Smith  Care Centre operated by the Rand Aid Association, a registered non-profit organisation offering a continuum of care to older persons in Johannesburg So...


Russia’s Changing Relations with Europe and Asia

In my blog of 15 February 2017 I reported on my completion of a forthcoming article in the Journal of Population Ageing on the topic of ‘The Changing Capabilities of Cohorts of the Elder...


Living too long? Is this the beginning of the end of the success story?

One of the greatest achievements of humankind has to be that as many people as possible are living as long as possible. But is this the beginning of the end of this success story? Around the wor...