This paper provides an introduction to a special issue focusing on diverse examples of policy practice in social inclusion and ageing across different regions of the world. These examples illustrate the multifaceted nature of the concept of social inclusion, and how it is applied in the context of global demographic ageing. The paper begins with an exploration of the history and development of the concept of social inclusion, as applied to ageing policy, and how the concept has emerged following its initial association with economic disadvantage. Now commonly defined as relating to social participation in key activities of the society in which people live, a social inclusionary approach highlights the risks of social exclusion and isolation faced by older people. Social inclusion thus incorporates core issues in ageing such as civil engagement, an ageing workforce, age-friendly communities, and civic involvement. There are some particular challenges to implementing social inclusion policies within the current environment, which are addressed within this special issue, and these include the impact of social and cultural change, particularly across some of the East Asian countries, and the impact of global financial crises on work and retirement.

Contemporary popular culture proposes new ideological associations between time, ageing, the body and personal identity projects. In a range of magazine texts, television shows and associated websites, several commercialised discourses equate ageing, and women's ageing in particular, with the ‘look’ of ageing. They project a version of personal ageing that is reversible and repairable, on the presumption that looking younger is universally a desirable goal and one that can be reached through regimes of control operating on skin, body shape and weight, hair and clothing. Different moral stances are established in these discourses. One set offers magazine readers putative control over acknowledged risks and threats deemed inherent to ageing. Such texts invoke personal responsibility for maintaining and indeed for re-claiming a youthful appearance in middle and old age. Another set shames and vilifies people who ‘look older than they should’. In those cases, visible ageing needs to be urgently dealt with, on the gerontophobic assumption that the look of ageing renders the individual progressively less socially desirable or even less acceptable. Different frames of mediation, such as the keying of personal censure and humiliation as play, complicate the moral critique of these discourses, even though their ageist orientations are often stark. The decade is constructed as an important unit of bodily ageing, when the target is to look or in some ways to be ‘ten years younger’.

This paper examines care management, or ‘managerial care’, a type of informal care for older adults that has been relatively neglected by researchers. While previous research has acknowledged that care-giving may involve tasks other than direct ‘hands-on’ care, the conceptualisation of managerial care has often been vague and inconsistent. This study is the first explicitly to investigate managerial care amongst a large sample of carers. In our conceptualisation, care management includes care-related discussions with other family members or the care recipient about the arrangements for formal services and financial matters, doing relevant paperwork, and seeking information. The study examines the prevalence of this type of care, the circumstances under which it occurs, its variations by care-giver characteristics, and its impact on the carers. We drew from the Canadian CARNET ‘Work and Family Survey’ a sub-sample of 1,847 full-time employed individuals who were assisting older relatives. The analysis shows that managerial care is common, distinct from other types of care, a meaningful construct, and that most care-givers provide both managerial and direct care. Care management includes both the orchestration of care and financial and bureaucratic management. Providing managerial care generates stress amongst women and interferes with work amongst men, and the aspect that generates the greatest personal and job costs amongst both men and women is the orchestration of care.

Sport participation is well known to promote health outcomes for children and adolescents. Nevertheless, there is insufficient evidence about the psychological and social outcomes of sport participation for older adults. This article provides the results of a systematic review of the psychological and social outcomes of sport participation for older adults. A systematic review of seven electronic databases was conducted and a total of 21 studies published that attended to psychological and/or social health benefits from sport participation of older adults (50 years old and over) were included. The outcomes of older adults’ sport participation included life satisfaction, depression, anxiety, stress, mood state, hedonistic values, socialisation, competition, and personal psychological outcomes such as personal empowerment, self-confidence, self-esteem and resistance to the negative view of ageing. Future studies are needed to conceptualise and operationalise the different levels of involvement of sport participation.

This article explores how outdoor adventure activities in a New Zealand community-based programme are experienced and understood as successful ageing strategies. Outdoor adventures are seen as positive leisure experiences that include challenging physical activity, social engagement and the natural environment. Using a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, a combination of seven interviews and a survey (N=80) were conducted with a Third Age adventures group. The research outcomes confirmed the attraction of adventure for this cohort. Risk engagement and uncertainty were perceived as less important in favour of emotional, social and environmental engagement through fun, excitement and pleasure. The natural environment was considered integral and defining of the experience with the participants demonstrating a strong environmental ethos. Opportunities for building social capital were plentiful and well illustrated. The benefits of engagement for health, wellbeing and successful ageing are identified through the physical, social and psychological domains. The research supports adventure participation as a successful ageing strategy that is relatively low cost, community based, has many preventative health benefits, builds communities and embraces the environment.

Immigration disrupts the bonding process in families. Maintaining close relationships with adult children can be an important protective factor for older immigrants' health and wellbeing. Quantitative research explaining such close relationships is rare. This study examined factors associated with close parent–child relationships in a purposive sample of 236 older Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles who provided information regarding 365 children. Two-level regression models were estimated to investigate factors contributing to cohesive parent–child relationships among these older adults. The findings showed that co-residence, a characteristic that distinguishes immigrant families from most non-immigrant families, was associated with lower parent–child relationship quality. Frequent contact was associated with closer relationships. While receiving instrumental and monetary support from children was associated with favourable ratings of relationships with children, providing such support to children was not related to parents' assessment of relationship quality. Parental perceptions of children being respectful was also associated with better relationship quality ratings. Overall, the findings demonstrate how family-related changes in the immigration context shape parent–child relationships in later life. Implications for future research and practice are provided.

Husbands and wives constitute a large proportion of carers of those older people suffering dementia. Many older people with dementia have had a long history of personal relationships, often having lived with the same partner for most of their lives. Following the life course approach, this study explores the ways in which a couple's marital experiences impinge upon the challenges faced when a spouse develops dementia in late life and is cared for by his or her partner. I start by surveying the relevant literature. The second section outlines a study of nine couples and includes brief case vignettes. In the third section I seek to test out hypotheses extrapolated from the material, with the theme of how perceptions of the caring situation are related to perceptions of the pre-morbid marital relationship, drawing heavily upon the case material. No single discussion is exhaustive, as any of these hypotheses are worthy of intensive study in their own right. I conclude with a summary of the findings and a reflection on how professionals might put these findings into practice.

What drives the perceptions of pension savings adequacy and what do workers expect to receive when they retire? These questions are assessed among married workers using an identical survey distributed to Dutch and American workers in 2007. Despite marked differences in expected pension replacement rates – where the Dutch replacement rates are systematically higher than the American rates – the perceived savings adequacy is more or less the same across Dutch and American workers. In both countries, about half of the respondents were confident they had amassed sufficient retirement savings. Individuals' perceived savings adequacy was found to be influenced by three groups of factors: trust in pension institutions (pension funds, banks, insurance companies and governments), social forces and psychological dispositions. This study shows that differences in the dispositions of workers (with respect to future orientation and financial planning) played a far larger role in explaining differences in perceptions of savings adequacy in the United States than in The Netherlands. Dutch workers rely and trust their pension fund and seem to leave thinking about and planning for retirement to its managers.

Remaining at home in older age is generally considered a sign of independence and therefore an important achievement. More than five million Americans aged over 75 years live alone, a number that is destined to increase thanks to advances in longevity. Living alone can allow the expression of one's preferences, but it can also bring out hardships hardly visible to outsiders, especially in an individualistic society such as the United States of America that rewards self-sufficiency. According to the sociologist Rose, in neo-liberal societies citizens have a duty to be free, self-reliant and independent. In this paper, Rose's theory and the political economy perspective serve as frameworks by which to examine how discourses around independence are translated in the experiences of 22 older adults aged over 75 living at home alone in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Participant observation and 41 in-depth interviews from 2006 to 2010 illustrate how being independent can be an essential component of individual identities. The informants' narratives shed light on the impact of policies that facilitate or regulate the moral imperative of independence. The findings underline the need to assess how discourses around independence are translated in minority populations, to promote studies and initiatives on interdependence, and to encourage international comparisons on living alone in older age.

Elders have long been recognised as among the most vulnerable people in disaster events. This paper reports a qualitative study of the self-perceived needs of older people in the aftermath of the Bam earthquake in Iran in 2003. A total of 56 people aged from 65 to 88 years were recruited to the study using purposive sampling, including 29 men and 27 women. Six focus group discussions and ten semi-structured individual interviews were conducted. Each focus group involved six to ten people from the cities of Bam and Baravat and their rural suburbs. Content analysis was used to analyse the transcribed data. The analysis identified four major themes among the informants' concerns: inappropriate service delivery, affronts to dignity, feeling insecure and emotional distress. A disaster-prone country like Iran needs to be appropriately prepared with culturally sensitive plans to meet the needs of those who suffer from their effects, not least older people. Emergency relief managers should note that for many older people in a disaster zone, customary forms of relief are neither required nor appropriate, and that their distinctive immediate and long-term needs should be assessed and met. Relief agencies need to be trained to be age-sensitive and should mainstream older people's rights in the planning and implementation of both the response and recovery phases of assistance.

This study examines whether and how couples share the provision of informal care for their parents. Four waves of the British General Household Survey contain cross-sectional information about caring for parents and parents-in-law. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted on 2214 couples that provided parent care. The findings emphasise married men's contribution to informal caring for the parental generation and at the same time demonstrate the limits of their involvement. Spouses share many parts of their care-giving but this arrangement is less common with respect to personal and physical care. The more care is required the more likely are people to participate in care for their parents-in-law. More sons-in-law than daughters-in-law provide care but, once involved, daughters-in-law provide on average more hours of care than sons-in-law. Own full-time employment reduces both men's and women's caring for their parents-in-law, and men's caring drops further if their wife is not in the labour market. The findings suggest that daughters-in-law often take direct responsibility whereas sons-in-laws' care-giving depends more on their wives' involvement. Children-in-laws' informal care-giving might decrease in the future because of women's increasing involvement in the labour market and rising levels of non-marital cohabitation in mid-life.

The aim of this paper is to stimulate theoretical thought about financial elder abuse within families, by exploring the potential of ‘routine activities theory’ for raising our understanding of, and response to, its occurrences. Research into financial elder abuse, defined as the illegal or improper use of a person's finances or property by another person, has tended to emphasise the abusive event and the associated risk factors. ‘Routine activities theory’, in contrast, directs attention more to developing prevention strategies that focus on everyday activities and hence seek to reduce the opportunities for illegal activity. The authors' research programme on the broad topic of money management and older people in Australia has conceptualised financial elder abuse as one possible outcome of the family management of older people's assets. This paper reports an application of routine activities theory to in-depth data of the asset-management practices and experiences of 81 family members who were assisting 86 older people. The paper concludes that the theory contributes to our understanding of how and why financial abuse occurs in families. It makes clear the distorting influence of a sense of entitlement and the preventive importance of both capable guardians, to oversee family-asset management and be alert to mismanagement, and the need for improved financial awareness, skills and probity in the community in connection with this common task of assisting older people to manage their financial assets.

This paper reports findings from a three-year study which integrated Kitwood's (1997) person-centred and Sabat's (2001) selfhood approaches in the design, fieldwork and analysis of a multi-method observational study that explored the social worlds of 14 people with dementia in continuing-care. The types of interactions that participants experienced in everyday ward life and during creative sessions were identified by observing, video-recording and engaging with them and by Dementia Care Mapping. The participants' responses to such interactions in terms of their well- or ill-being and expressions of self were identified and documented. The findings indicate that in the wards, staff interactions were often limited and sometimes abusive and that participants experienced ill-being, whereas during creative sessions, interactions were generally facilitatory and celebratory with the participants experiencing wellbeing. By developing the selfhood approach and integrating it with the person-centred approach, I argue that recognising and supporting selfhood (or not) during interactions can lead to qualitatively different staff behaviours, with consequences for the well- or ill-being of people with dementia. There is scope for incorporating this developed selfhood framework into staff training, for it has the potential to transform practice and the experiences of people with dementia in receipt of care.

Is growing older a process of decline or of keeping active? Foucauldian theory suggests particular regimes of fitness will discipline ageing bodies in distinctively different ways. This paper reports a comparative ethnographic and qualitative interview study of a ‘fitness exercise’ and a ‘dance exercise’ group for the over-fifties. The findings demonstrate the ways in which contradictory cultural discourses in the fitness training curricula are associated with different subjective experiences of physical and psychological ageing. The ‘fitness exercise’ group focused on individual fitness levels for the ageing body in the terms of the cultural discourses of health and physiology. The ‘dance exercise’ group focused on the graceful ageing body in the terms of the cultural discourses of the psycho-social benefits of movement in relation to others. The study combined phenomenological and social constructionist dimensions, and exemplifies the ways in which the subjective experience of the ageing body may become embedded in particular cultures of fitness.

Age discrimination is one of the last forms of discrimination yet to be tackled by legislation. Despite the call of the United Nations for older people to be treated fairly, regardless of age, many industries still overtly discriminate against them. The advertising industry is a particular offender, either ignoring older people altogether or presenting them in caricatures or negative stereotypes. The authors suggest that regulation or legislation may be required, to raise awareness of the issues surrounding age discrimination and to persuade advertisers to present images of older people which are more relevant and acceptable in today's society.

Concerns about the economic impact of an ageing population have triggered many developed countries to advance policies that attempt to extend working lives and discourage early retirement. There is considerable evidence of a relationship between poor health and early retirement, but some researchers have suggested that there is a ‘justification bias’ in claims that ill-health is the cause of retirement. This paper reports a longitudinal qualitative study that interviewed 60 New Zealanders aged between 55 and 70 years on two occasions, and analysed their explanations of health-related retirement decisions. Although the participants' explanations included poor health as an important reason for retirement, two additional health-related retirement pathways were identified: the ‘maximisation of life’, being decisions to retire whilst healthy to fulfil other life goals; and ‘health protection’, being decisions motivated by health protection and promotion. These health pathways interacted with other factors such as financial security. An elucidation of these motivations pays particular attention to the social and discursive context of explanations of retirement, and considers the three identified health-retirement pathways in relation to the sickness justification bias and current government policies to extend working lives.

Television viewing is an important leisure activity for older adults. The aim of the current study is to provide insight into the meanings of television in older adults' lives, by analysing change and continuity in their television viewing. A qualitative study was conducted that included in-depth interviews on television viewing among a diverse sample of Dutch people aged 65 years and older (N=86). The interview study shows that television has a variety of meanings for older adults. The meanings of television viewing changed in response to changes in everyday life, but this did not happen unidirectionally. Retirement, physical changes and changes in household composition led to increases as well as decreases in television viewing. Watching more television was experienced in both positive and negative ways. After a loss in the interpersonal sphere, television viewing can play a valuable role in adaptation processes, but it was also experienced as an activity that needs to be avoided. With regard to television content we found that some programmes gained importance when people age, whereas other programmes became less important or attractive. These changes in television viewing occurred for only part of the sample and some interviewees experienced continuity in the status of viewing and in their content preferences. The results are discussed in the context of recent literature on leisure constraints, leisure as coping, and adaptation strategies.

Using four-wave panel data of 1,327 older adults in rural China, this study examined potential gender and marital status differences in the relationships between three forms of intergenerational support (monetary, instrumental and emotional support) and the level of depression of the older adults. Results from a pooled time-series fixed-effects model showed that receiving and providing monetary support had a comparable beneficial effect on mothers and fathers, but mothers benefited more psychologically than fathers from closer relationships with their children. Exchanges in instrumental support was not related to either mothers' or fathers' level of depression. Widowhood further affected the gendered relationships between support and depression in that recently widowed fathers had a significantly higher level of depression when they received more monetary support from their children. In contrast, providing monetary support to children was associated with a significantly higher level of depression among recently widowed mothers. We explained the findings in the context of familial and gender norms in the Chinese culture and temporal needs for family support that link with bereavement coping stages among older adults. We argued that the gender and marital status patterns observed in this study are attributive to more fundamental differences in men's and women's social positions in the Chinese society.

This paper compares findings on the distribution of support networks in the City of Liverpool and in rural communities in North Wales. It demonstrates that while support network type is highly correlated with a wide range of demographic and social variables in both urban and rural samples, the nature of the relationships are not always comparable. The paper shows how cultural, migration and socio-economic factors interact to affect the formation of different types of support networks. As a result of a more stable elderly population, more old people in Liverpool have network types able to provide a high level of informal care and support.