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Co-living with robots in a care home
Social robots are not something most people encounter in their everyday life and especially not in the UK. Yet, robots seem to be a subject of great interest, and a phenomenon so ubiquitous within ...
Statistical (il)literacy and expert fatigue
In this country it is perfectly acceptable to say “I don’t do numbers”. It’s a strange cultural quirk, which would be completely unimaginable in China or Vietnam. ...
Home Sweet Home 2: Housing supply and policy reform
In July, I wrote a blog exploring the future of housing for older people. Housing demand outstrips supply in all sectors, but a lack of appropriate housing for older people has a knock-on effect fo...
Combining localism with globalism is the real mandate for Brexit
With the publication of the results of wave nine of the British Election Study, the survey conducted in the days immediately after the EU referendum between the 24th June and the 4th July 2016, it ...
Ageing Nobel Laureates or an Ageing Mankind?
It is Nobel Prize awarding season, and with just one award to go – Literature is to be awarded on Thursday – it is also the season of pundits noticing the laureates have a remarkable te...
Eighty two years of age and another sixty three to go – imagine it....(!?)
Around my mother-in-law’s 82nd birthday a few months ago, the media reported on the age of Mbah Gotho of Indonesia, reportedly born on 31 December 1870 and a full 145 years of age. It was qui...
Postponing the pension: are we all working longer?
The 2014 Pension Act included a provision for regular - every 6 years - reviews of the State Pension Age (SPA), and in March this year, the government published the terms of reference for the first...
The UK’s Ageing Population: translating academic evidence into policy.
By 2014, the average age of the UK population exceeded 40 for the first time. Approximately 75% of UK population growth by 2040 was projected to be in the 60 and over age group, and the number of t...
All human beings are intergenerational
In a society that focuses on individual needs and rights, the notion that intergenerational relationships underpin all human beings is challenging. Intergenerationality does not erase or diminish o...
Complex Decision Making
In a speech last May, Andy Haldane, Chief Economist for the Bank of England, admitted that he was unable to understand pensions because they were so complicated. Moreover, he suggested countl...
Finland and early exit: sustainability, adequacy and fairness
It has been reported that Finland plans to introduce a policy that would allow long-term unemployed people over the age of 60 the option to retire early at an estimated cost to the Finnish Governme...
Long-term care systems for sub-Saharan Africa*
The international debate on the challenges of integrated long-term care (LTC) provision for older persons is not only an agenda point for the ageing developed populations of the world but also an a...
Living longer lives…..living shorter lives
Knowing how long we can expect to live is a difficult enough issue (and yet we are expected to have a go at this in order to secure a suitable pension pot for our old age), but the way news about o...
Grandad is coming……
In the 20th century, as the populations of more developed countries aged, an increasing body of research on grandparents and on the roles of grandparents in the modern family built up, especially i...
Here’s what would have happened if Brexit vote was weighted by age
Britain’s youngest voters will spend about 60 years living with the consequences of Brexit – even though the majority of them voted Remain. Wouldn’t it be fairer if their vote was...