ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to establish that the study of inequality and old age is a real subject capable of being subjected to social scientific analysis. It will assert that there is a distinctive sociological study of old age, ageing and inequality, and further, although such study is related to the biological subject of gerontology, that there is a distinctive social science subject independent from it. Biological processes are significant for understanding the condition of elderly people, but overdeterministic assumptions about the universality and inevitability of poor health and low status in old age are misleading. The chapter goes on to consider whether there is a distinctive inequality associated with old age in modern Western society, which is independent of other forms of inequality.
