ABSTRACT
The recent burgeoning of literature on the elderly is a product of the latest in a series of waves of anxiety about an ageing population. The immediate post-war period saw a similar rise of concern in the wake of demographic analysis which emphasized the dangers of a falling birth rate and an increasingly unfavourable dependency ratio. The anxiety today focuses not only on dependency ratios and the fear that an ageing population will impose a heavy economic burden, but also on how the elderly are to be cared for and how the costs of their care are to be met.
