This paper examines older people's everyday routines and their implications for older people's uses and perceptions of domestic spaces in both mainstream and sheltered housing settings. It draws from qualitative data collected during a large-scale survey of the housing and support needs of older people, and specifically the responses of 60 informants to personal interviews. The findings are that domestic spaces have a significant influence on the scope that older people have to retain a sense of self-determination. It is shown that environmental defects, such as poorly configured domestic spaces, have consequences for older people's sense of continuity and choice. The conclusions are that domestic spaces are living spaces that embody personal and family-oriented priorities. It is suggested that older people require adequate, accessible and personalised domestic spaces in order to facilitate three important objectives: routines, responsibilities and reflection.

The study examines the relationship between husband-wife equality in late adulthood and two dimensions of marital quality: burn-out, and satisfaction with marriage. Husband-wife equality has been examined on the basis of marital power relations and the division of roles in three areas: in-home tasks, financial management, and social life. Equity theory provided the conceptual framework for the hypothesis that equality in various aspects of marriage enhances marital quality. The research sample consisted of 116 retired Israeli couples. Negative correlations were found between equality in family roles and burn-out among both husbands and wives. Surprisingly, equality in the performance of in-home roles correlated positively with burn-out among husbands. Moreover, equality in power relations correlated positively with marital satisfaction among wives. In addition, an interaction was found for wives' perceptions of equality in power relations and their husbands' level of burn-out. State of health correlated negatively with burn-out for both partners. Furthermore, husbands' religiosity explained a substantial percentage of the variance in their level of burn-out and marital satisfaction. On the whole, wives reported a higher level of burn-out and a lower level of marital satisfaction than did their husbands.

Increasing numbers of people are using complementary therapies, and many are in older age groups. Although recent empirical research has considered the demands for complementary medicine, and in particular its recent consumer boom, little acknowledgement is given in research to the different social categories of users, and to the intricacies of their different motivations and consumer behaviours. In the context of a relative paucity of dedicated research investigations, the paper highlights the relevance of social gerontological perspectives. Based on a questionnaire survey of 144 older users, and in-depth interviews with 20 older users in southern England, it considers trends in local use and user actions, attitudes and opinions. From a disciplinary perspective, the paper also contributes to a growing body of research which focuses on older peoples’ self-implemented health and health care strategies. There is a substantial degree of user satisfaction with the therapies used, and many respondents claimed to have benefited in terms of their physical and mental health. Older users are also empowered by their treatment decisions and negotiations, many of which are made either independently, or jointly between themselves and their therapists. Treatment solutions are typically constructed with combinations of complementary therapies, or combinations of complementary therapies and orthodox health services.

This article explores the expectations of inter-generational reciprocity amongst older Greek Cypriot women and men living in London from the parents' perspective. Participants engaged in a number of discourses when talking about children. These discourses, which were culturally determined, underpinned parental expectations of inter-generational reciprocity. On a day-to-day basis, older Greek Cypriots were both givers and receivers of help. Gender differences, rather than differences in age or marital status, were evident in both the giving and receiving of help. Parents' perceptions of parent–child relations were not affected by migration, and were pivotal to wellbeing in later life. The bonds between parents and children were perceived as being strong and enduring, although changing throughout the lifecourse.

In this paper we consider some of the ways that the third age can be thought about and studied. Taking the work of Peter Laslett as our key source, we explore his ‘aspirational’ approach toward redefining post-working life and look at some of its limitations as both definition and explanation. There is a need for a more sociologically informed approach to the third age, and we outline three potentially important structures that might better explain it – class, birth cohort, and generation. Whilst it might seem attractive to see the third age as a class-determined status, based on the material and social advantages accruing to people who have retired from well-paid positions in society, the historical period in which the third age has emerged makes this explanation less than adequate. Equally a cohort-based explanation, locating the third age in the ‘ageing’ of the birth cohort known as the baby boom generation, fails fully to capture the pervasiveness and irreversibility of the cultural change that has shaped not just one but a sequence of cohorts beginning with those born in the years just before World War II. Instead, we argue for a generational framework in understanding the third age, drawing upon Mannheim rather than Marx as the more promising guide in this area.

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.

Dementia care is in transition, and the potential exists for a radical reform of the provision of services to people with dementia. Recent developments in Scotland based on the report of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care, With Respect to Old Age, provide an example of the possibilities and opportunities available to governments for creating services based on principles of equity and justice. It is timely therefore to consider the implications of recent government reports for the development of dementia care provision. This paper explores the social and political context of formal dementia care provision and considers the implications of recent government reports for the future. The historical discourses surrounding the term ‘dementia’, and where and who cares for people with dementia, provide insights into the options available to policy makers. A brief exploration of the economic context of dementia care provision, and of the historically low level of political interest in dementia care, provides a backdrop to recent political initiatives that seek to redress this omission.

This paper explores older women's evaluations of their weight as well as the perceived merits and detriments of weight gain and weight loss in later life. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 22 community-dwelling women aged 61 to 92 years, I examine the meanings that the women attribute to dieting, desired body weights and obesity. The women frequently offer unsolicited accounts for why they have gained or lost weight over time, and disclose their perceptions of and reasons for needing to alter their current body weights. I probe the tensions between weight loss for health concerns versus appearance goals. The women express dissatisfaction with their weight gain in terms of their physical appearance. However, they also tend to describe the need to lose weight in terms of health risks and benefits rather than in terms of approximating the beauty ideal or achieving a desired body size and shape. Health tends to be described as a valid justification for being concerned with one's weight, while an appearance orientation is deemed to be indicative of vanity. Many of the women suggest that while the health benefits of weight loss are often the stated reason for losing weight, the perceived appearance dividends are the key motivation behind altering one's body weight in later life.

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring poverty among people aged 60 years or more and living alone in Hong Kong. It uses a lifestyle approach and is based on an index of subjective perceptions of deprivation consisting of 79 indicators. These cover the main expenditure categories of single elders in Hong Kong: housing, food, clothing, durable goods, fuel and water, entertainment and social activities, medical care and transport. We tentatively identify a poverty threshold of HK $7,000 per month in regard to these expenditure categories. With incomes below $6,000, respondents reduce spending on miscellaneous items and, at incomes of $5,000, they reduce spending on clothing, entertainment and social activities and transport. At incomes below $4,000, they cut down on food, durable goods, and fuel and water expenditure. As incomes drop below $4,000, respondents are forced to cut to a significant degree the ‘necessities’ of life, in particular food, to make ends meet. Despite this, levels of transfer payments to Hong Kong's eligible single elders are currently below this amount. It is noteworthy that respondents do not reduce housing, medical care, services and ‘other’ expenses when their incomes are below $7,000 per month. We conclude that Hong Kong's status as a ‘tiger welfare regime’, and in particular its relatively comprehensive provision of public housing and health care, helps to explain this finding.

The assumption that social and economic transitions in a country pose a threat to the provision of support to older people is questioned in this study. The study investigates the availability and sources of such material, practical and emotional support in urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. The support provided by older people towards household functioning is also explored. It was found from an interview survey of 701 individuals aged 60 years and older that the propensity to receive support was greater among rural older people than their urban counterparts. Gender differences were also observed, in that men were mainly providers of material support, and women of practical and emotional support. Among married older people, spouses were reported as important sources of emotional support for both elderly men and women, and some regional differences were observed. The data show mutuality in the provision of support between older people and their family members. It is evident that support to elderly people from their families is strong in Bangladesh, and that the socio-cultural dynamics of the society influence its provision.

There has been little systematic research into the design of care environments for older people. This article reviews empirical studies from both the architectural and the psychological literature. It outlines the instruments that are currently available for measuring both the environment and the quality of life of older people, and it summarises the evidence on the layout of buildings, the sensory environment and the privacy of residents. The conclusion is drawn that all evidence-based design must be a compromise or dynamic and, as demands on the caring environment change over time, this compromise must be re-visited in the form of post-occupancy evaluation.

Access to health care should be determined by clinical need and not by age. Older people form an increasing proportion of the general population and of those with coronary heart disease, but compared with younger people they are less likely to be invited for cardiac rehabilitation programmes and more likely not to complete them. This study examined the factors that contribute to these trends in Scotland. A national survey of rehabilitation centres (n = 30) found that the majority of their programme co-ordinators believe that age does influence access to rehabilitation. While only one programme used an overt age criterion, age was widely perceived to influence access, both during initial assessment and in assessments for exercise components; and while the respondents acknowledged that other criteria influenced selection, the factors cited most often were all more common during old age, e.g. the presence of other medical ailments, lower initial exercise tolerance, and poor access to private or public transport. Focus groups undertaken with a sub-sample of the co-ordinators revealed that staff appeared to have knowledge of the benefits of cardiac rehabilitation for older people, but that the scarcity of resources prevented them from offering more accessible and appropriate services.

The Australian health care system is frequently portrayed as being in crisis, with reference to either large financial burdens in the form of hospital deficits, or declining service levels. Older people, characterised as a homogeneous category, are repeatedly identified as a major contributor to the crisis, by unnecessarily occupying acute beds while they await a vacancy in a residential facility. Several enquiries and hospital taskforce management groups have been set up to tackle the problem. This article reviews their findings and strategic recommendations, particularly as they relate to older people. Short-term policy responses are being developed which specifically target older people for early discharge and alternative levels of care, and which, while claiming positive intentions, may introduce new forms of age discrimination into the health system. Few of the currently favoured proposals promote age-inclusivity and older people's rights to equal access to acute care.

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.

This paper discusses the material aspects of globalisation and the effects of the movements of trade, capital and people around the world on older men and women. While some older people have benefited, most notably where pensions and health care are well developed, the majority of older men and women are among the poor who have not. Free trade, economic restructuring, the globalisation of finance, and the surge in migration, have in most parts of the world tended to produce harmful consequences for older people. These developments have been overseen, and sometimes dictated, by inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) such as the International Monetary Foundation (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while other IGOs with less power have been limited to anti-ageist exhortation. Globalisation transfers resources from the poor to the rich within and between countries. It therefore increases social problems while simultaneously diminishing the freedom and capacity of countries to make social policy. Nonetheless, the effects of globalisation, and particularly its financial dimensions, on a nation's capacity for making social policy can be exaggerated. Political will can combat international economic orthodoxy, but the evident cases are the exception rather than the rule.

There has been very limited debate about the usefulness of links between later life and disability studies. The paper reviews the arguments for and against a closer association. The social model of disability makes crucial the separation of disability from impairment and shows that it is society that does the disabling. This is never so clear as in the case of housing policies for older people, the focus of this article. Older people suffer discrimination and have to submit to a medical model of later life if they receive health or social care services. The argument against an association between later life studies and disability studies is that later life is an immensely diverse experience, much of it nothing to do with disability. Moreover, some older people reject the negative connotation when later life is equated with disability. The paper argues, however, for a specific application of the social model of disability to the situation of older people with impairments who receive services. It also asserts that the social model of disability can be accommodated in critical gerontology and, in particular, in a post-modern perspective. The paper concludes with examples of the value of the social model of disability at both the policy and political levels.