ABSTRACT
PROVISION for the elderly occupies a very dominant position in the social policies of all industrialised countries. This is because the problems of old age are many and varied and they extend over many fields of policy - housing, community care services, hospital services, institutionalisation and social security services. At the same time the consequences of old age are not uniform. It may cause severe dependency in any of the fields mentioned and it may cause no dependency at all. This poses not only problems of adequacy of provision but problems of flexibility and co-ordination for the social policy makers. Services provided must not only be adequate but flexible enough to take account of the various sub-groupings within the broad group that is called the elderly. The second reason for which provision for the elderly has taken up such a dominant position in social policy is the increase in the numbers of the elderly. Old age is a natural physiological process and unlike unemployment or sickness it cannot be prevented. A great deal has been said and written before and since the last war about the general trend towards an ageing population in industrialised societies. Though there is some justification for this fear, it is now clear that population projections made by the various Reports in the early 1940's, including the Beveridge Report, exaggerated the rise in the proportion of the elderly among the general population. 1 The dividing age between the elderly and the rest of the population is not universally agreed because of the wide individual differences in physical and mental capacity among persons of any one year of age. The one used in Table 39 and in the discussion that follows is the minimum statutory age for retirement pensions. Number of Elderly Eprsons in Great Britain. Thousands https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Year
Men aged 65 and over
Women aged 60 and over
Total number of elderly
Proportion of elderly to total population
1911
920
1,830
2,750
6.7%
1921
1,100
2,250
3,350
7.8%
1931
1,420
2,8701
4,290
9.5%
1941
1,850
3,680
5,530
11.8%
1951
2,170
4,450
6,620
13.5%
1961
2,318
5,237
7,555
14.7%
Source: Censuses England and Wales, and Scotland.