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Social Policies for Old Age: A Story of Shifting Images and Time Lag

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Health and Cognition in Old Age

Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Aging ((Int. Perspect. Aging,volume 10))

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Abstract

Population aging pushes aging policies up the political agenda and poses new challenges to them. These policies currently need to accommodate a growing number of older people and the increasing healthy life expectancy. Therefore, most Western governments are currently evaluating and reforming their aging policies. In doing so, however, policy-makers are not only guided by empirical facts on old age and by the welfare state design but the image of old age also exerts an influence. Policy-makers need to balance the empirical facts against images when designing aging policies. Moreover, they need to do this while ironing out time lags, which emerge because of the different speeds at which the situation in old age, the image of older people, and aging policies change. This chapter discusses social policies for older people, focusing on the roles of shifting images and time lag.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Penny Sorensen and Cristian Colliander for their insightful comments and suggestions, which helped to improve this chapter. This study is part of the “Panelundersökning av åldrande och de äldre (PSAE) 2010-11” [Panel Survey of Ageing and the Elderly (PSAE) 2010–11], which was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.

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  1. Department of Social Research/Social Policy, Helsinki University, Helsinki, Finland

    Kathrin Komp

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  1. Kathrin Komp
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Correspondence to Kathrin Komp .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education, University of Luxembourg, Walferdange, Luxembourg

    Anja K. Leist

  2. Gerontology Research Center, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Jenni Kulmala

  3. Mental Health Promotion Unit, National Institute for Health and Welfare, THL, Vaasa, Finland

    Fredrica Nyqvist

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Komp, K. (2014). Social Policies for Old Age: A Story of Shifting Images and Time Lag. In: Leist, A., Kulmala, J., Nyqvist, F. (eds) Health and Cognition in Old Age. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06650-9_20

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