Policymakers like to make use of age criteria, because they provide a transparent and seemingly objective standard. In reality, however, age limits are not as innocent as they appear: distinctions on the basis of age are often irrelevant and the actual age thresholds tend to be arbitrary. Age limits can also be criticised from a theoretical perspective: how can the heterogeneity of today's older people be reconciled with uniform age-defined classes? In response to a European Union Directive of 2000, Belgium implemented strict anti-discrimination legislation. This provides all the more reason to ascertain the prevalence and justification of the use of age criteria in legislation. Belgium is a federal state with three communities and three regions, and the scrutiny has been restricted to the Flemish community and region. All legislation has been screened for the use of 50 or more years as an age criterion, and all occurrences have been critically examined. The paper focuses on three fields of statutory regulation: early retirement, concessionary public transport fares, and the different care entitlements of people with disabilities and of older people. Evidence of age discrimination was found, although often in a form that benefits older people. The justification of the age criterion was often inadequate, so the adoption often appears no more than convenient standard practice. The paper concludes that policy makers should consider the systematic replacement of age thresholds by other criteria.

The South Korean National Pension scheme was instituted in 1988 and now covers all private-sector employees and the self-employed. Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, it has become controversial and is under considerable pressure, not least because of the perceived financial implications of the country's rapidly ageing population. Predictions of financial shortfalls or ‘unsustainability’ have prompted calls for severe ‘downsizing’ of the scheme. The debate on the reform of the scheme has been dominated by the need to respond to demographic change in ways that assist the national economy, invariably by reducing social expenditure. The debate, however, has given little attention to the social or welfare functions of the pension scheme, though the material insecurity of older people has been exacerbated by major changes in the labour market and the family. This paper details recent socio-demographic changes in Korea and discusses their implications for old-age security and pension reform. It argues that public-pension schemes should be developed to strengthen social protection against the insecurities of old-age, that intra-generational redistribution should be at the core of the reformed arrangements, and that the introduction of a comprehensive non-contributory pension scheme should be seriously considered.

The contemporary discussion about the growing ‘burden of population ageing’ should not neglect the substantial productive potential of older people. Using micro-data from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this paper examines the relationships between selected socio-demographic characteristics and the rates of participation in voluntary work in 10 European countries among those aged 50 or more years. The analysis reveals a clear spatial pattern, with relatively high participation rates in Northern Europe and relatively low participation rates in Mediterranean countries, and shows that age, education, health and involvement in other social activities strongly influence an individual's propensity to engage in volunteer work. A multivariate logistic regression provided no indication that the country differences can be explained by variations in population composition or attributes, such as the age structure or differences in health status. The findings have important implications for future cross-national research and for policies to promote the participation of older adults in voluntary work, and suggest that policies and programmes to encourage older citizens to make greater use of their productive capacities are feasible. It is concluded that further research needs to account for the influences of institutions and culture on participation in volunteering, the finding of this paper.

This paper reports a study of the associations between social relations, language and cognition among people aged 85 or more years (hereafter the ‘oldest old’). Although the links between cognition and both social relations and language ability are well-established, less is known about the relationship between social relations and language skills, especially among the oldest old. With a sample of 20 adults aged 85–93 years living independently in two retirement communities (a seniors' apartment complex and independent apartments in a continuum-of-care setting), we used the approach of the Rochester Interaction Record to assess the frequency, purpose and quality of their social interactions over one week. It was hypothesised that aspects of social relations, as well as the type of residential setting, would associate with both cognitive skills (measured using the Composite Cognistat) and language skills (measured using the Boston Naming Test). It was found that participants who had a low proportion of interactions with family members, or a high proportion with friends, as well as those with diverse relationships, performed better on the cognitive and language tasks. Furthermore, those from the setting with more programmed activities performed better on the language task. The conclusion critically examines the findings about the influence of family relationships and the importance of residential setting.

This article examines the leisure behaviour, attitudes and life satisfaction of a sample of 383 retirees aged 50 or more years in an Israeli national survey. Multivariate analyses identified four leisure-styles on the basis of the type of leisure activity engaged in, its relative sophistication, whether it was a formally-organised cultural activity, and its location (at home or outdoors). The four styles were: ‘company seekers’, ‘media consumers’, ‘culture enthusiasts’ and ‘sophisticated choosers’. The levels of participation in the four styles were associated with nine background characteristics: gender, education, income, former occupation, work status, retirement pattern, origin, residential area and health. Differences in life satisfaction were associated with leisure participation and leisure satisfaction. Two of the groups, the ‘culture enthusiasts’ and the ‘sophisticated choosers’, were relatively active, and enjoyed significantly higher levels of satisfaction in both their leisure and their lives. These findings tend to support Havighurst's ‘activity theory’. Since these two leisure-styles were followed by minorities, and most of the sample pursued the other leisure-styles, the findings imply that a large proportion of the retired population are inadequately prepared to take up ‘active leisure’. If more older people are to become engaged in active leisure, with benefits to both themselves and to society, they require more guidance and support.

Drawing upon interviews with 22 young athletes aged on average 20 years, this article examines the ways in which they used observations of the ageing and old age of their family members to shape the ways in which they anticipated the ageing of their own bodies. The representations of the bodies, roles and lifestyles of their parents and grandparents provided ‘narrative maps’ that held pre-presentations of the young athletes' possible futures. They included both preferred and feared scenarios about middle age and old age, particularly the opportunities they would have for maintaining physical activity and the appearance of their bodies. The young men's and the young women's narrative maps differed: the women's accounts of old age gave more prominence to the loss of appearance, while the men's focused more on the loss of control and independence. The informants were highly sensitised to the biological dimensions of ageing which, for them, meant the inevitable decline of the material body, especially in performance terms, and both genders recognised social dimensions, particularly that responsibilities to jobs and family would constrain the time available for exercise. To understand more fully young athletes' experiences of self-ageing, and the family as a key arena for the embodied projection and inscription of ageing narratives, further research is required.

There has been debate for some years as to whether the best model of care for people with dementia emphasises specialist facilities or integrated service provision. Although the United Kingdom National Service Framework for Older People recommended that local authority social services departments encourage the development of specialist residential care for people with dementia, uncertainty continues as to the benefits of particular care regimes, partly because research evidence is limited. This paper examines a large number of ‘performance measures’ from long-term care facilities in North West England that have residents with dementia. Of the 287 in the survey, 56 per cent described themselves as specialist services for elderly people with mental ill-health problems (known familiarly as ‘EMI homes’). It was envisaged that EMI homes would score higher than non-EMI homes on several measures of service quality for people with dementia that were developed from research evidence and policy documents. The analysis, however, found that EMI homes performed better than non-EMI homes on only a few measures. While both home types achieved good results on some standards, on others both performed poorly. Overall, EMI and non-EMI homes offered a similar service.