This paper describes the theoretical and methodological perspectives adopted by a multidisciplinary research group undertaking a government-funded evaluation of a United Kingdom innovation in the continuing care of elderly people. In 1983 three experimental National Health Service (NHS) nursing homes were set up to care for patients usually cared for in NHS geriatric hospitals. Drawing on different approaches to the evaluation of health-care innovations, this paper delineates an evaluation model which identifies four types of variables: structure, process, intermediate outcome and final outcome. The relationship of this model to the design of an evaluation comprising seven complementary research activities is described, emphasising the need for multiple perspectives and multiple methods in policy-oriented health-care evaluations.

Rapid economic growth in post-war Japan, has been accompanied by unprecedented population ageing. In this paper the impact of Japan's ageing population is analysed in respect of (i) health-care services (ii) allocation of resources to health care and (iii) the manpower requirements to support health in old age. These projections are based upon macroeconomic modelling techniques.

This article compares treatment of the elderly today and in the mid-nineteenth century. The starting point is David Thomson's recent claim (Ageing and Society, 4, 1984) that welfare-state pension benefits are not as valuable, relative to the incomes of non-pensioners, as were the poor-law pensions of Dickensian England. Thomson's calculations of incomes and of the value and availability of pensions in the mid-nineteenth century are critically reassessed. It is argued that welfare-state pensions are superior to poor-law pensions not only in absolute terms but also as a proportion of average working-class incomes. The paper concludes with some comments on long-term trends in pensioners' living standards and the implications for pension policy.