Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
under two-thirds of the world's older population live in the global South
(54 per cent live in Asia) (United Nations, 2009).
Improvements in the well-being and longevity of older people are
associated with particular economic, social, cultural and political chal-
lenges, which are integral to wider processes of development, globaliza-
tion and inequality. The increase in the older population in the
twenty-first century will be greatest and most rapid in the global South
(Zelenev, 2008), where countries are already facing enormous chal-
lenges associated with economic restructuring, industrialization,
urbanization, changing household and family structures, environmen-
tal degradation and climate change. Concern has been expressed that
some countries 'will grow old before they grow rich' (Powell, 2010: 3).
Ageing, however, has been largely neglected by mainstream develop-
ment agencies to date. The United Nations Millennium Development
Goals and poverty reduction strategies driven by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, for example, focus largely on health and
development concerns affecting younger age groups - such as child
and maternal mortality rates, HIV and other infectious diseases and
education - rather than the chronic non-infectious diseases and impair-
ments or financial and social issues that affect the well-being of many
older people (Aboderin, 2008). The alarmist tone of mainstream devel-
opment agencies' responses to population ageing and the lack of atten-
tion paid to the well-being of older people reveals the dominance of
narrow neoliberal agendas that focus on developing human capital,
productivity and economic growth, underpinned by assumptions about
a lack of productivity in old age and a failure to recognize older people's
contributions to development (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2004; Aboderin, 2008).
Reflecting the limited attention to ageing within development dis-
courses, research has only recently begun to investigate the connections
between ageing and development and the implications for the well-being
of older people in the global South. The growing interdisciplinary field
of 'social gerontology' that developed in the social sciences in recent
decades examines a broad range of issues in relation to older people's
health, healthcare, welfare and cultural life (Andrews et al., 2009).
Most studies, however, address the concerns of ageing populations in
the global North, where older people have considerably more access to
formal care provision, pensions and welfare support than in the global
South and are more likely to benefit from advances in healthcare and
technology that enhance their quality of life and longevity. Older people
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