Past twenty-one years of age, a striking new cover and a new editor: is Ageing & Society about to be radically transformed? Not at all, but over the next five years it will aim to be even better at the things it has been doing well. To stretch the life course analogy, having reached a ‘mature age’ and with an accomplished juvenilia, the paths that promise most are well defined. The achievement to date has been impressive, and the strong foundation creates a larger potential. It is in this context and spirit that I take up the editorship in succession to Bill Bytheway. The editorial policy will of course be frequently re-examined and refined, but neither the editorial board nor I wish to see the journal's core ambitions and values change. My aims are to help authors achieve these to an even higher standard, and particularly to raise the title's reputation for originality, for the quality of the research that it reports, and for its standards of communication. The goal is to raise the ‘impact’ of Ageing & Society, in citation indicators and, more importantly, in its contributions to understanding and to the formation of opinion and policy.

Older people in a rural Ghanaian community indicated that they look forward to death. Traditional ideas of ancestorhood, reincarnation and modern Christian beliefs about life after death had little influence on their resignation. Images of a possible ‘hereafter’ hardly existed. Agnosticism – in a religious guise – prevailed. They saw death foremost as a welcome rest after a long and strenuous life. Their readiness for death did not, however, include an acceptance of euthanasia. Both the young and the old held the view that life and death are and should remain in God's hands. This article is based on anthropological fieldwork in the rural town of Kwahu-Tafo in southern Ghana.

After a review of current conceptual models used in nutrition studies, we develop and test a ‘Dietary Change Model’ based on a sample of older rural adults. Predictor variables include socio-demographic, social network, and nutritional risk/support constructs; mediating variables include number of dietary changes attempted and whether the changes are successfully made; and criterion variables focus on psychosocial outcomes. The model is tested on a sample of 298 randomly selected respondents aged 60 years or more residing in five rural communities in Oregon. We find that those most likely to make dietary changes are women, married, and living in smaller households. The social network factors of density, range, and frequency of interaction negatively impact healthy dietary change. Among the most important nutritional support factors to have positive effects on dietary change are having a physician recommend changes in diet, and participating in a community food programme (women only). Successfully changing diet most clearly related to life satisfaction; results of other criterion variables were often complicated by marked gender differences.

This article explores the changing nature and patterns of the ‘generational contract’, with particular reference to the exchange of nursing care and housing assets between older parents and their adult children. Inheritance practices and attitudes are used to examine the ways in which socio-economic, demographic and policy changes have recently altered the conventional arrangements in Japanese society. The previously defined ‘generational contract’ is now ambiguous, and the expectations and obligations of different family members are fragmented. This article also discusses whether such practices in Japan are unique and the ways in which they differ from the English situation. Family obligations and inheritance have been more explicitly connected in the Japanese social and legal systems, while in England there is neither legal obligation to support older parents nor any constraint on inheritance. This article elucidates the similarities and differences in the patterns of inheritance and thus the exchange models between care and inheritance in the two societies.

Most long-term care for older people in the UK has been provided by independent organisations since the 1980s. This article draws on interviews with various stakeholders in the sector, as well as secondary sources. The evidence shows that government policies in the areas of funding, regulation and the labour market are facilitating the concentration of long-term care provision. Three areas of related concern are identified: firstly, the effects of increased ownership transfers; secondly, issues relating to standardisation; and thirdly, the possibility of a decline in the quality of care if local monopolies emerge. It is concluded that government regulation must be concerned with the structure of the market, as well as the conditions within care homes, if the interests of residents are to be protected.

Demographic change means not only that there will be a larger number of very old people in the future, but also that the median age of the population is moving upwards. At the same time, technological, economic and political change has destabilised labour markets. In the face of growing unemployment, and influenced by early retirement policies in some countries, labour market attachment for people in mid and later life, especially men, has been falling. Increasing costs of supporting ‘non-productive’ mid-lifers and looming skill and labour shortages have now led to the promotion of Active Ageing policies. Education for people in mid and later life is central to this approach. A study of almost 1,000 students aged 40 years and over at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, reveals patterns of educational involvement, motives and outcomes, and shows the extent of up-skilling which is taking place. This example illustrates prospects for and challenges to the role of education as part of an Active Ageing approach.