ABSTRACT
At the time of the 1991 Census 18.4 per cent of the people living within the boundaries of the city of Manchester proper (74,505 people) and 20.9 per cent of the people of Sheffield (104,853) were aged 65 or above. Within the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester, according to the same Census, 447,928 people (17.9 per cent of the overall 2.5 million population of the conurbation) were 65 or above. Consistent with national trends, these figures were evidence that the proportion of the local population aged 65 or over was increasing-in Greater Manchester as a whole by some 0.6 per cent since the previous Census, and in South Yorkshire as a whole by some 1.5 per cent.1 In part because of the loss of younger people through migration, the two old industrial urban regions were ageing demographically. Putting the point colloquially, there were more older people around-about one fifth of the overall population in total in these regions as a whole, as in most of the other regions of the North.2 It does need to be said, however, that the voice of the elderly is noticeable in much current writing on the city, especially from the academy, primarily for its absence.
