We need to move the focus from age to needs
The pandemic has brought out how ageism is deeply rooted in our society
Thomas Scharf, Professor of Social Gerontology at the Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, President of the British Society of Gerontology, and author
Blotted-out from our collective mind by decades of silence, the beep-beep from residential care settings is no longer a feeble signal on the media radar, but a roar in the ears of a society that pretended not to know. The “out there” - to borrow from Truman Capote’s genius - sits now in the middle of our social conscience. In a blinding flash, the pandemic has illuminated the reality of the old and vulnerable, the shortcomings of our policy and the fragile fibers of our socio-economic fabric.
In the present murky waters, the threads of the plot appear at times untraceable. I’m particularly grateful to Professor Thomas Scharf for finding the time to retrieve some of the building blocks of the dynamics that are unfolding. With a PhD in Political Science, he’s Professor of Social Gerontology at the Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University and President of the British Society of Gerontology. For almost thirty years, his work has focused on social exclusion and inequalities in later life, topics covered by the book he co-edited, From Exclusion to Inclusion in Old Age - A global challenge. The book casts a light on the mechanisms of “social exclusion,” an umbrella term adopted by the European Commission at the end of the Eighties as an alternative to the guilt-inducing (for national policy makers) poverty.
Now that the pandemic is reshuffling the deck of cards, the risk of exclusion will be less and less drawn on the dotted line of age. Like in a mirror, in the hardship of the aftermath, generations will be called to recognize their reciprocal vulnerabilities. The response could not be a meagre aid tossed “out there” because there’s not an “out there” any more. There’s only “in here” and we’re all in this together.
First of all, what is social gerontology?
Social gerontology covers issues regarding age and aging from a social perspective. It studies how age is represented in politics, economy and media. Over time, its reach has expanded to include perspectives from art to humanities. It’s a field, rather than a discipline in itself and, in fact, many social gerontologists find their way to gerontology from other disciplines.
As the co-author of articles and studies on the condition of older persons, can you briefly detail how our economic system contributes to disadvantages in later life? It seems that time works like a multiplier of inequalities.
Over time, gerontology has adopted a life course perspective to describe how experiences that happen early in life shape outcomes in older age. Advantages and disadvantages play out throughout life, but difficult experiences accumulate over time. The result is that there’s a great polarization towards the end of life, at precisely the time when our ability to reverse the course of negative outcomes, such as poverty, is reduced.
You wrote about the danger of social exclusion and we’re beginning to see to what extent it can impact the older generations. Can you tell us more about it?
Social exclusion refers to the separation of individuals and groups from mainstream society and, as other aspects of our social lives, it evolves over the life course. Exclusion in later life, in particular, is multidimensional and is the result of a dynamic mix of factors that pertain to different aspects of life, from civic participation to material and financial resources, from social relations to socio-cultural aspects. Some characteristics, like having sufficient material and financial resources, can cushion other forms of social exclusion, but the ability to overcome disadvantage generally declines with age as does the possibility to escape poverty in the absence of government intervention.
We are brought up using chronological age to regulate every aspect of our lives and we take for granted that it is as a way to segment people. But this also means we're feeding a system that becomes a source of bias, especially when we get old. What do you make of this paradox?
In her book The Aging Enterprise, Carroll Estes detailed the interplay between social, economic and political forces and the creation of an industry based on chronological age. The stereotypes are internalized and we see the way in which old age is regarded in all sorts of ways that expose ageism and negative stereotypes. You can judge a society by how well it treats its most vulnerable citizens and, on this basis, it’s evident that we don’t sufficiently value the lives of older people.
With the proposed Convention on the Rights of the Older Person, the UN has an opportunity to address the problem. Personally, I have tended to resist this approach to avoid the further separation of old and young, and because it risks fueling age-based discrimination. Take loneliness in later life, for example. There is growing evidence about its damaging effects and many societies are beginning to pay closer attention to reducing risks of loneliness. In particular, evidence shows that people who experience loneliness are more likely to become unwell and to die prematurely. In the UK, there are now many organizations that are trying to tackle this issue amongst the older population.
However, my concern is that this perspective is reinforcing negative stereotypes of later life. Loneliness can be devastating at any age. One in ten people aged 16-24 reports often being lonely, compared with 3% of over 65 (Source: UK Office for National Statistics).Chronological age takes attention away from this fact and may mean that policy makers focus unduly on reducing loneliness of older people when they should really be thinking about problems faced at earlier stages of life.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the rights of the older people have been, and continue to be, systematically denied solely on the basis of chronological age. Having originally been rather skeptical about the need for a UN Convention on the Rights of the Older Person, I am starting to change my view and consider this a helpful response to the way in which older people’s human rights have been ignored. A rights-based approach has the potential to change public perceptions of what it means to age.
What contributions can social gerontology bring in this time of pandemic?
While more traditional social science disciplines may struggle to understand an age perspective and respond appropriately to the unfolding crisis, the social gerontology approach places age at the center of the debate and provides the lens that allows us to “read” what happens to older people and voice our concerns. I’m prepared to go even further and say that there can be no meaningful response to the pandemic without the rich insights of social gerontology.
Do you think that what happened in nursing and care homes hit by Covid-19 is finally going to be an eye-opener for the general public?
I hope that people will realize we have a problem when it comes to residential care settings. These facilities have historically been highly marginalized, as the late British gerontologist Peter Townsend pointed out almost sixty years ago in his groundbreaking book The Last Refuge. The Covid-crisis has exposed the weakness of contemporary care settings. It will be necessary to have a fundamental rethink of care. This doesn’t mean that we will abandon the idea that we need residential forms of care all together or that we will move everybody out of congregated settings. There remains a need for good quality provision and this implies the need to move much more in the direction of a socialized, tax-funded care system to ensure that people receive a good standard of care and that care staff are sufficiently well trained and paid. It is evident in countries like the UK that we don’t sufficiently value the skills and knowledge of care workers. This needs to change. We need to make a professional career in social care a real option for students and identify this as a great way for them to secure a stable future.
Years of budget cuts produced the scarcity of resources in the healthcare system that we are now witnessing with the tremendous consequences of limited access to life saving procedures. Is this a wake-up call to reflect upon the spending of public money?
When the pandemic is over, there will need to be a major independent public inquiry. What would happen next will depend on our response, on what we have learned from these lessons. The existing model has failed spectacularly. It has demonstrated that, as a minimum, it can’t even protect people. One of the societies that so far has responded best is Germany, a country with a stronger social net. It’s likely that progressive thinkers will have better answers than those with conservative or neo-liberal views, but we need to acknowledge that too many people are living precarious existences and that our social safety net needs to be strong enough to protect people at all stages of life.
We know that age segmentation is a heritage of the industrial revolution and the national states. Now that we are moving towards a digital and (hopefully) green economy, might we be able to adopt a new framework?
If a new economic system will emerge, I hope we won’t go back to the old model and reinforce age segregation. The pandemic has brought out how ageism is deeply rooted in society. When you go from 69 to 70, according to some policy and media commentators, you’re suddenly transformed into someone who is frail, vulnerable and dependent. If we fall back into the idea that the older population needs to be protected, cut off from society, this will set us back many years.
On the other hand, many retired specialists returned to work to give a hand in the Covid-emergency. Is this the best response to politics that pitch the generations against each other and the best antidote to the temptation of lumping member of the generations together?
People want to help and this is a positive reflection on society. Many of those who lined up to help are going to be older people. They are doctors, nurses and emergency workers. Yet ill-considered policy approaches want these same people to be locked away because of their age. This exposes some of the contradictions of our society. We all need to reflect on what matters more. We have a model that often separates age groups. What we need is stronger intergenerational solidarity. Society works best when all the age groups co-operate. In this way we can create a new type of social policy that is in the interest of young and old. The re-imagination of the failed system goes back to universal principles: we need to base the model on need rather than on age, class and gender.
