ABSTRACT

Analysis of the changing environment facing older people has become an urgent issue to consider at the beginning of a new century. The tools and techniques for achieving this are, however, somewhat uncertain given the transformed economic and social context experienced by older people. For much of the preceding 50 years, the lives of older people were shaped by aspirations to develop welfare states, expressed with different structures and value orientations, across the various European countries (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Pierson & Castles, 2000). Such arrangements were to develop, from the late 1940s onwards, as a crucial source of support for older people. Indeed, as John Myles (1984) and others have argued, much of welfare-state provision has traditionally been built around the needs of older people.