ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a cross-cultural view of the inequalities associated with old age. It looks at the nature of, and theories about, the variations in the social status of elderly people in different societies. Just as the previous chapter showed that it is wrong to assume that for biological reasons elderly people, as they get older, decline in status, so this chapter seeks to demonstrate that there is broad variation in the social status of elderly people. There is no inevitable social process by which elderly people lose status. The decline in status is not assigned by the impersonal force of nature, but is a feature of particular societies and social processes. It is not universal and inevitable that old age is associated with poverty, loss of power and loss of status. In some societies old age leads to high social status and in some it leads to low. Although there are some universal features of biological ageing, which were discussed in the preceding chapter, the change in status associated with ageing is a social, not a biological, product. Is it possible to characterize the societies that are more likely to give high social status to the elderly which hold them in esteem and give them social prestige? On the other hand, what characteristics will typify those societies in which old people have little or no power and little or no social honour?
