Neoliberalising Old Age

This book examines the effect of neoliberalism on the recent ageing and social policy agenda in the UK and the USA.

John Macnicol (Author)

9781107115187, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 October 2015

250 pages, 5 b/w illus. 6 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'Macnicol takes on a difficult set of issues in the retirement and pension literature and does an exceptional job of presenting and defending his critique of the current neoliberal consensus with respect to the viable options for dealing with the projected pension costs associated with the retirement of the baby boomers and population aging more generally in the UK and the USA.' John B. Williamson, Boston College, Massachusetts

Governments are encouraging later-life working and state pension ages are being raised. There is also a growing debate on intergenerational equity and on ageism/age discrimination. John Macnicol, one of Europe's leading academic analysts of old age and ageing, examines the effect of neoliberalism on the recent ageing and social policy agenda in the UK and the USA. He argues that the demographic and economic impulses behind recent policy changes are in fact less important than the effect of neoliberalism as an ideology, which has caused certain key problems to be defined in a particular way. The book outlines past theories of old age and examines pensions reform, the debate on life expectancy gains, the causes of retirement, the idea of intergenerational equity, the current debate on ageism/age discrimination and the likely human consequences of raising state pension ages.

1. The changing meanings of old age
2. Old age in the past
3. Pensions reform, from the 1990s onwards
4. Demography as destiny?
5. Retirement
6. Intergenerational equity
7. Towards age equality?
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB]