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"Macnicol, John"
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Neoliberalising old age
\"This book explores an issue central to the study of age and ageing: Do we wish to preserve old age as a discrete stage of life, to be protected by welfare policies specifically targeting 'the old'? Should old age be accorded a privileged status? This may recognise the needs of a particular age group with regard to health, income and social care. But by doing so, we support the inaccurate and possibly offensive definition of 'old age' as the stage of life beyond age 65 - a demarcation line which has no biological or cognitive significance, since human beings age at very different rates. Defining old age in this way may ghettoise and marginalise one group of people in society, encouraging prejudice against them via policies that 'single out, stigmatise and isolate the aged from the rest of society', in a way that can be seen as subtly ageist. On the other hand, should we dispense with age as a categorisation and work towards an 'age-irrelevant', 'age-neutral' or 'ageless' society - one in which individuals will be judged by the content of their character, rather than their chronological age? Is the concept of old age an outmoded relic from the past?\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Reconstructing the Underclass
In late 2011, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government announced the launch of a new programme on ‘troubled families’ – a term used to describe the estimated 120,000 most behaviourally anti-social families in England and Wales. To many social scientists, this appeared to be yet another reconstruction of the broad ‘underclass’ concept that has run like a thread of analysis through UK poverty discourses over the last 150 years. The symbolic nature and coded meanings of this particular concept of poverty are very interesting, as is the way it has been reconstructed periodically. This paper summarises these reconstructions, and the analytical issues raised by them: the ‘residuum’ concept of the 1880–1914 period; the ‘social problem group’ of the inter-war years; the ‘problem family’ of the 1940s and 1950s; the ‘cycle of deprivation’ of the 1970s; and the ‘underclass’ of the 1980s and 1990s.
Journal Article
Older Men and Work in the Twenty-First Century: What Can the History of Retirement Tell Us?
The New Labour government has set a target of getting 1,000,000 more people aged 50 and over (50+) back into work as part of its aim of achieving an overall employment rate of 80 per cent among people of working age. To this end, a variety of policies have been introduced to encourage citizens to work later in life, notably the 2006 Age Regulations. However, much of the government's analysis is based on supply-side reasoning that has retained its credibility only because of the rise in older people's employment rates that has taken place since 1994. This article focuses on the employment problems of older men, since their employment rates have fallen sharply since the 1970s. Examination of both the history of retirement and less favourable underlying economic trends suggests that extending the working lives of older men may not be easy.
Journal Article
The American experience of age discrimination legislation
In 2006, the United Kingdom passed legislation against age discrimination in employment. This legislation outlawed direct and indirect discrimination, granted employment protection to older workers, allowing opportunities for older workers to work past the age of sixty-five. In the United States, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) has been safeguarding the rights and interests of older workers since 1967. This act provided protection against age-based discrimination in hiring, firing, promotion, demotion, retraining, working hours, compensation, workplace harassment and other aspects of employment. Since 1968, mandatory retirement has been abolished except for in a few occupations where public safety is an issue. Interestingly the ADEA did not protect elected officials, their staff and other high-level policy makers. It did not affect the minimum age for certain public offices and nor did it provide age-based legal protection for young people. This chapter explores the origins and the subsequent development of the ADEA, and draws some parallels with Britain. In doing so, the chapter does not tacitly accept the policy maker's assumption that the benefits of such legislation is unproblematic, and that the issues are simply technocratic ones relating to minor adjustments. Instead, the chapter analyses the ADEA's origins, aims and achievements from a critical perspective.
Book Chapter
The Age Discrimination Debate in Britain: From the 1930s to the Present
Age discrimination has become a topical issue in Britain, and legislation is promised by the year 2006. It is often viewed as a recent problem, caused by the decline in older men's economic activity rates since the 1970s, by concerns over ageing populations in the future and by the need to extend working lives. Yet it has a long history, going back at least to the 1930s, with much research into older workers being conducted in 1950s Britain. Examination of this history helps us understand some of the difficulties inherent in the concepts of ageism and age discrimination.
Journal Article
A History of Work-Disability
Since the early 1970s, there have been marked improvements in the aggregate health status of the UK population. Between 1980/2 and 2008/10, life expectancy at birth increased from 70.81 years to 78.05 years for males, and from 76.80 years to 82.12 years for females. Life expectancy at age 65 also increased over the same period — by 4.3 years for males and 3.5 years for females. Between 1968 and 2008, age-standardised mortality rates for men and women declined by 51% and 43% respectively, and now stand at their lowest-ever recorded level. Strikingly, coronary deaths have halved in the last ten years.
Book Chapter
Young and old must carve out a shared future
Genuinely taking on board age discrimination legislation poses a serious challenge for academe, says John Macnicol
Journal Article
