The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the innovative nursing home voucher scheme that was introduced by the Valencia Autonomous Region of Spain in the early 1990s to implement targets laid down by the national plan for the development of older people's services. The article begins with a review of the evolution of Spanish social services, and especially the nursing home sector, and then summarises the genesis, objectives and characteristics of the voucher scheme. The main part of the paper reports a performance analysis and economic evaluation of the programme. On the basis of detailed information over four years, it is concluded that nursing home vouchers have contributed to the increased supply of publicly-financed rooms, have promoted equality of access to the service, and have increased user choice. It is also shown, however, that while vouchers can lead to an increase in the quality of inputs, they increase utilisation and expenditure. In the absence of the monitoring or reporting data that would be required, it is not possible to determine whether the scheme has increased efficiency, in the sense of improving the quality of life of frail older people at reasonable and containable cost.

This paper examines the meaning of social dancing for older people. It is based on a one-year qualitative research project, which is seeking to explore the experiences of social dance for people aged 60 years or more who attend various dance events in Essex and south-east London. The findings suggest that the social dance experience is not only or simply a beneficial physical experience for older people, it also bestows other significant benefits for those who enter the third age and beyond. It can provide continuity within change. It offers an opportunity to be sociable and have fun in ways that both reflect, and avowedly move beyond, the dancers' teenage years. It promotes a welcome sense of a community spirit. It is a way of becoming visible and aesthetically pleasing, and it bestows a sense of worth and achievement in skills learnt through dancing. Last but not least, dancers can experience the joy of a fit and able body in both real and mythic senses.

In Europe, older women are more likely than older men to be living in poverty, and the contrast is directly related to their domestic roles and labour market position during earlier phases of their life courses. Despite Sweden's well-developed social security system, the generalisation applies to its older women. This paper examines the current incomes and life courses of 14 middle-aged and older Swedish women who have periodically had to rely on social assistance. Their circumstances and living conditions are considered in relation to their earlier lives and to the contextual conditions of the country's welfare state. Both life course and feminist perspectives are applied. All the interviewed women had been the main carers of their children, and had worked part-time or in low-paid jobs. Their formal employment histories have been the foundation of their vulnerable economic situation in older age, which the Swedish social security system does little to combat. Unless the bases and assumptions of the social security model are changed, there will continue to be many older women who live a life of poverty or near poverty.

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.

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.

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.

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.