Lifecourse perspectives on ageing populations

Population ageing is a global process, but the tempo and dynamics vary from country to country as well as within countries. For example, the rapidity of the population ageing process in China, one of the fastest in the world, has more consequences on the individual level than the slow transition in a country like Sweden, which has one of the slowest transitions of European countries (Chesnais, 1992; Kinsella and Phillips, 2005; Johansson and Cheng, 2014).

In Chapter Six of this volume, Turek, Perek-Bialas and Stypinska clarify how the integration of Poland into the European Union facilitated emigration, which became a mass phenomenon among younger cohorts after 2004. Mass emigration caused rapid population ageing, turning Poland and other post-socialist countries into the fastest-ageing societies in Europe. The process of population ageing affects both social structures and lifecourses. At the same time, changes in the lives of people impact on the processes of population ageing. In the introduction, we suggested a model that describes the existence of certain social mechanisms. In our conclusion, we are now able to give a more detailed answer to how such interactions between macro and micro levels can take place.

Knowledge about how the balance among age groups influences lifecourses and about the way that changes in lifecourses impact on demographic patterns of society are important for our understanding of society and the formulation of social policies that target social risks (Beck, 1992). This book illustrates events that have caused visible changes in demographics and lifecourses, including inventions in medicine and changes in health policies and social policies.

Population dynamics

People construct their lifecourses through choices and actions within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances (Grenier, 2012). Motel-Klingebiel's Chapter Three in this volume describes substantial shifts for the individual, such as the increase in lifespan as mortality risks are postponed into later life, educational phases are prolonged, partnership and parenthood become increasingly conditional, regional mobility grows, and overall flexibilisation, pluralisation and individualisation become the order of the day. These institutionalised features of modern society intertwine as a structured trajectory within social contexts such as family, working life and the welfare system and as individual biographies.