The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing is the most important United Nations (UN) document on population ageing for 20 years and sets the context for global policies on ageing for the current century. Drawing from the authors' active participation in the preparation of the draft that formed the basis of the Madrid Plan, the primary purpose of this article is to describe the two-year process of development of the Plan. Then the main features of the Plan are outlined, including the pivotal role of the society for all ages concept and its thematic foundations. The Madrid Plan is contrasted with its Vienna predecessor of 20 years earlier – the priority given to developing countries in the former is identified as one of the key differences between them. Following a brief outline of the implementation and monitoring processes for the Madrid Plan, a model is presented as a potential template for use in evaluating the impact of the Plan and, especially, its effectiveness in improving the conditions of older people's lives. It is argued that a systematic process of monitoring and evaluation is required if the Plan is not to suffer the fate of being regarded as yet another worthy ‘wish list’.

Britain along with other western European countries has seen a marked decrease in allegiance to traditional forms of Christianity during the latter part of the 20th century. Although church attendance remains relatively high among older people compared with younger age groups, there has been little or no investigation into the stability or change of people's religious belief and practice with increasing age. This paper present findings on these issues from the Southampton Ageing Project, which from 1977–78 to 2002 followed 342 people almost all of whom had had an entirely Christian religious education and all of whom at the outset were aged 65 or more years. Although religion has continued to have considerable meaning in the lives of up to one-half of the participants, approximately one-quarter of the sample expressed a declining commitment to a religious faith and to church membership. The participants' accounts of their recent life experiences, for example following bereavement, give instances of disappointment with the support that they received from institutional religion and show that this was a factor in their declining adherence. They also provide suggestions for further investigation into the origin of this decline. The conclusion argues that the study of older people's religious and spiritual beliefs and practice should be integrated with the investigation of self and identity and of sources of existential meaning in later life.

This paper uses qualitative data from a cross-national study of ‘cash for care’ schemes in five European countries (Austria, France, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom) to consider the concepts of empowerment and independence in relation to both care-users and care-givers. The paper locates the schemes along two axes, one of regulation/non-regulation, the other whether relatives can be paid or not. Each of the schemes has a different impact both on the care relationship and on the labour market for care. In The Netherlands where relatives can be paid, for example, a fully commodified form of informal care emerges; but in Austria and Italy with low regulation, a mix of informal and formal care-givers/workers has emerged with many international migrant workers. In the UK, direct payments allow care-users to employ local care-workers who deliver care for various lengths of time; while in France a credentialised system means that care-work is delivered by qualified workers but for very short intervals. The main conclusion is that none of these schemes have a simple outcome or advantage, and that the contexts in which they occur and the nature of their regulation has to be understood before drawing conclusions about their impact on empowerment and independence on both sides of the care relationship.

Retirement is frequently a period of change, when the roles and relationships associated with individuals' previous labour market positions are transformed. It is also a time when personal relationships, including the marital relationship and relationships with friends and family, come under increased scrutiny and may be realigned. Many studies of adjustment to retirement focus primarily on individual motivation; by contrast, this paper seeks to examine the structure of resources within which such decisions are framed. The paper examines the contribution that gender roles and identities make to the overall configuration of resources available to particular individuals. It draws upon qualitative research conducted with older people in four contrasting parts of the United Kingdom, and examines the combination of labour market and non-labour-market activities in which they are involved prior to state retirement age and as they withdraw from paid work. It explores how older people invoke various gendered identities to negotiate change and continuity during this time. The paper argues that gender roles and identities are central to this process and that the reflexive deployment of gender may rank alongside financial resources and social capital in its importance to the achievement of satisfying retirement transitions. Amongst those interviewed, traditional gendered roles predominated, and these sat less comfortably with retirement for men than for women.

This paper focuses on the circumstances of death and dying in old age. It considers the ways in which social policies and social gerontology reflect the values of independence, autonomy and citizenship, and it considers the implication of these values for older people who are dependent on others for care and support at the end-of-life. It discusses the complexity of the relationship between ageing and dying, by exploring recent research from the fields of social gerontology and the sociology of death and dying. Arguing that a long-term perspective is required to understand fully the circumstances of older people's deaths, it analyses the third age/fourth age dichotomy as a conceptual model. The task of developing knowledge about the links between ageing and dying requires consideration of moral and ethical principles. The article examines the conceptual frameworks developed by feminists who argue for an ethics of care as a central analytic referent in social policy. The feminist ethics-of-care approach provides a powerful critique of the moral framework of independence and autonomy as characterised in contemporary policies and practices. Feminist ethicists argue that the inter-relatedness of human beings and the importance of the social context have been overlooked in the preoccupation with individual rights – as reflected more generally in policies and social life. It is argued in the paper that the need for care at the end-of-life highlights these shortcomings. The feminist ethics of care has considerable potential to illuminate our understanding of dependency and care, and to generate both new approaches to policy and practice in health and social care and theoretical perspectives in gerontology.

The study of minority ethnic older people in Britain is hampered by the lack of a reliable sampling frame. There are few national studies and most research projects are small and involve localised samples. The infrastructure for doing research with such population groups is poorly set up. This article attempts to address the needs of practitioners by reviewing the use of common sampling frames and approaches, pointing out caveats, and highlighting potential. More recent and innovative sampling approaches are also discussed. The article deals with issues of bias, reliability, perspective and geography. Recommendations for improved practice include being more transparent in reporting the derivation of samples, making more efficient use of existing data sets, better ways of working with community organisations as well as more effective collaborative research. It is also argued that various authorities and funding bodies should increase investment in this area, especially given the projected absolute and proportionate increases in minority ethnic older people in Britain.

Retirement has traditionally been seen as the beginning of old age. It has been depicted as mandatory expulsion from the workforce and seen to mark the transition to a period of ill health and poverty. Such ideas and associations are however being challenged in the developed world by socio-demographic changes in retirement and old age. People in the United Kingdom as elsewhere are living longer and healthier lives, and many older people have access to non-state incomes that afford them a reasonable standard of living in retirement. There is however still concern that inequalities persist into old age. Data from two waves of the British Whitehall II study have been used to assess the relative effects of occupational grade, psychological and general health during working life, and retirement patterns or pathways on activities, attitudes to health and income in retirement. The results show that the majority of the sample reported good health, financial security and overall satisfaction with life, but with observable inequalities. Regression analyses demonstrate that pre-retirement circumstances generally had a greater effect on later life than the retirement route or pathway. Retirement no longer represents a drastic break between working and post-work life but rather, the results suggest, there are continuities between the two periods. It is concluded that the main causes of inequalities in retirement are work-based rather than in retirement itself.