Later-life: a ‘Third Age’ of opportunity but for whom?

Increasing life expectancy means that most people live well beyond the Statutory retirement age in the UK and similarly wealthy nations. In response, a ‘Third Age’ has been proposed as a phase of life that is freed from responsibility, bringing opportunities for self-fulfilment through participation in leisure activities, volunteering and travel. At the same time, longstanding pessimistic narratives view growing proportions of population in retirement as a problem and a threat, an unsustainable drain on the working-age population and directly responsible for many of the social and economic challenges those at the working ages face. In this lecture I argue that both narratives are problematic for a number of reasons, most notably because they ignore the stark inequalities in the experiences of the ‘Third Age’. Furthermore, in the context of a decade of crises, narratives that neglect inequalities lend support to policies that exacerbate and concentrate insecurity in many areas of later life including housing, care provision, relationships and social participation. I will also make a broader methodological point, that rigorous and theoretically-informed analyses of quantitative social data are crucial for our understanding of opportunities and disadvantages in later life. I argue that as a society, today more than ever, we need to provide reliable numbers on the social world around us, and a citizenship capable of understanding and debating what these numbers do and do not show. Altogether this lecture evidences inequalities in ageing and argues for intellectual and political perspectives that centre understanding of, and solutions to, precarity in later life.

Please note that this lecture might be filmed.

Timings: 5.15-6.30pm: Lecture in Meadows Lecture Theatre

Followed by a reception in the Chrystal Macmillan Building foyer until 7.30pm

Inaugural lecture: Professor Alan Marshall