The changing nature of family life has become a major issue in contemporary Britain. Concerns that change will bring moral decline and social fragmentation are countered by a more optimistic view which focuses on a future of more equitable and flexible family ties. Research drawing on area-based data in Luton amongst older, middle-aged and younger people with experience of family change suggests that so far as inter-generational relations, caring, and transfers of family wealth are concerned, traditional attitudes towards blood ties, household independence and care and support survive alongside new step relationships. The research also suggests that although several respondents had more than one generation of experience of family change, the language of step relationships is still one which is not yet completely accepted, or one with which people feel completely at ease.

In both Spain and Sweden the most important public support for older people that is provided in their own homes are home-help services. In Sweden, these programmes were expanded in years of economic growth but recently have radically declined. Spain still strives to expand them in spite of financial problems. Both countries ration these services but in different ways. Spain provides relatively few hours of help with household tasks, primarily to poor old people. At present, one to two per cent of the 65-plus population is covered. Local government is still trying to reach more people to relieve pressure on limited institutional care. Sweden continues to cut down the service from the present coverage of nine per cent of the 65-plus population. It is focusing on the oldest and frailest people of all social classes who live alone. It is gradually being transformed into home health care. Institutional care has not been cut back to the same degree. Spain uses strict needs assessments and eligibility criteria to target clients. Sweden has sharpened its needs assessments and raised fees to discourage users with lesser needs.

The purpose of the paper is to describe and contrast public policies regarding the participation of older people in volunteer work in three countries: the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. Data were collected in 1997–1998 through analysis of policy documents and through 50 interviews with researchers, policy makers and volunteer co-ordinators. The study found considerable differences between the three countries in the provision of government policies and programmes for senior volunteering. It was concluded that such differences could be explained in the context of the definition of seniors' social participation employed by policy-makers in each country.

This article examines the personal outcomes of overseas residence in later life, by analysing some findings from the first large-scale, comparative study of the retirement of British citizens to southern Europe. Four study areas are compared: Tuscany in Italy, Malta, the Costa del Sol of Spain, and the Algarve region of Portugal. The analysis focuses on the expressed reasons for moving to and residing in the areas, the reported advantages and disadvantages, and the respondents' predictions of whether they would stay or leave in response to adverse and beneficial events. Overall the subjects give very positive reports, but there are considerable differences among the four areas. The associations of individual variation in well-being with both a person's ‘temporal commitment’ to the area and to facets of their social integration are analysed. The onset of severe incapacity, sufficient to prevent the continued running of a home, is the event most likely to cause people to leave their adopted areas of residence.

This article is based on an analysis of national data on morbidity and disability in Britain, covering a 15 year period.

This article starts with a critique of the literature relating to the living at home/living in a home contrast. It shows this body of work to be dominated by a structured dependency paradigm which depicts residential care as exemplar of institution and home as embodying personal control and self- identity. A modification of the paradigm which gives prominence to diversity and meaning is used to analyse in-depth interviews with frail older people living at home and in a home. The analysis suggests that the prevailing account of residential care needs updating and some revision. The article concludes that the marketisation of social care has had both positive and negative effects on both care delivery in a home and at home. It also contends that there is a limited demand from older people for collective living arrangements and that institutionalisation processes affect older people in whatever setting.

Empirical research on women's feelings about their body size has traditionally focused on adolescents and young adults and has been carried out within the framework of experimental social psychology. This article examines the subjective meanings of body size for a sample of 12 women aged between 63 and 75 years via an analysis of in-depth interview data. The findings suggest that body size has a complexity of contradictory meanings for older women, which are shaped in relation to social discourses surrounding beauty ideals, gender identity and constructions of age and ageing. Many of the older women were dissatisfied with their body size, highlighting the cross-generational influence of a ‘thin ideal’ of size. At the same time, however, the women adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards body size and eating, rejecting the pressures surrounding size and food. This attitude was related to the women's constructions of this stage of their lives as a time of freedom, their awareness of personal mortality, and their beliefs about the inevitability of weight-gain as they grew older. The findings are discussed in relation to feminist approaches to body size and gerontological research on age/gender stereotypes.

Recent literature on intergenerational relations – although giving different explanations – suggests that the giving of money and services to children reinforces the receiving of money and services by elderly people. To explore the flow of support between the generations we present evidence about the type and intensity of the help that elderly people receive from their adult children and their families. By comparing five developed countries we examine whether the amount of family help transferred to older people is shaped by a ‘crowding out’ process, in which more generous welfare systems displace family solidarity. Taking co-residence into account the international comparison does not support the crowding out hypothesis. We then show that the giving of services by older people to their adult children increases the probability that they receive help from them. This indirectly supports the reverse hypothesis, namely that the relationship between the state and the family may be described as a process of ‘crowding in’: generous welfare systems which give resources to elderly people help to increase rather than undermine family solidarity.

The exterior territories, or surfaces, of the body have become symbols of the self in late modernity. People are increasingly overwhelmed with messages of youthful ideals: how to stay young or how to get old without signs of ageing. However, studies of the effects of these images on people's own experiences as they grow older seem to be lacking. The present paper reports an empirical study which focuses on body image for men and women of different ages. Four hypotheses, derived from social gerontological theories, are developed and tested against data: the female beauty hypothesis, the double marginality hypothesis, the ageing mask hypothesis and the ageless self hypothesis. The survey, undertaken by 2,002 Swedes, reveals a response pattern with basically positive body images that, for women, is increasingly positive with age. The results are, thus, in sharp contrast to the gerontophobic messages from consumer culture as well as contrary to some gerontological theories.

An increasing number of older people are international migrants. Even where older people have not been migrants themselves, it is increasingly likely that international migration will touch their personal lives, either through significant family members or through their own decisions to resettle in later life. Despite the growing importance of long-distance travel and resettlement in other countries, however, the relationship between migration and ageing is a relatively neglected topic in gerontology. Using the examples of migrants in minority ethnic communities, this paper proposes a typology or scheme with which to relate (a) the principal reasons for migration earlier in the lifecourse to (b) the range of possibilities for migration which may face older people in later life. Conclusions about care needs and identity are discussed with reference to older migrants in ethnic minorities in Britain. It is argued that the ‘minority migrant’ example (while a distinctive experience in each community) has important lessons for, and applications to, understanding general patterns of international migration in later life.

The hallmark of sociology is its emphases on first, people, secondly, structures and, thirdly, their interrelationships. Similarly, we see sociological research on age as concerned with (1) people over their life course; (2) age-related structures and institutions; and (3) the dynamic interplay between people and structures as each influences the other. Guided by our ‘aging and society paradigm’, we review the research legacy as it has focused more on (1) than on (2), and is only now concerned with understanding the interplay between them (3). Hence our challenge to future researchers is to devise strategies for understanding and analysing this interplay and its possible contributions to the ever-accumulating research legacy.

As the ‘aging and society’ paradigm examines structure in its own right, it should have an immediate appeal to sociologists. On the one hand it can be seen as a schematic for gerontology or research on human development and, on the other, as a theory or paradigm in its own right. I see the various parts and phases of the paradigm as a learning process, where stopping somewhere half-way is risky: one has to go the whole hog before really prospering from its logic.

To focus on individuals and social change together requires analyses that, in the words of Hardy and Waite (1997), can assess the nature and temporal patterns of individual behaviour, while simultaneously attending to the manner in which this behaviour is enclosed in different organisational structures that are themselves changing, whether synchronically or asynchronically.

The Rileys have always reminded us of the dangers of neglecting structure, or of treating it as a mere contextual characteristic in people's lives, particularly in the form of life course reductionism. In addition, however, the temporal aspects of structures are important. There is a risk in using solely the various social situations of different cohorts as the basis of analysis. Mere comparison with an older cohort causes the ‘surrounding structure’ to appear too static. The explanation or understanding of a phenomenon consequently stops half-way. We must also remember that the cohort concept, as well as chronological age, serves as a proxy measure for attitudes and behaviours that actually carry the effect and provide theoretically meaningful interpretation.