This paper attempts to study the socioeconomic and demographic profile of the elderly population at a micro level based on data collected in a sample survey, entitled ‘Ageing and health conditions in rural areas - a sample survey 1990’, conducted in the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh, India. The distribution of the elderly population according to their work status, health problems and needs is also discussed. The views and actions of the younger family members toward the elderly members are examined and found to vary according to caste group, sex, and work status of the latter. It is noted that elderly females are usually relatively more dependent on their families than their male counterparts. The behaviour of the family members towards their elders is also significantly affected by the literacy and income levels of family members. Provision for an old-age pension is strongly recommended.

This paper reports on the analysis of data collected in a study looking at older people moving into nursing and residential homes. Using life history methodology, participants are interviewed before and after arrival at homes in order to determine the process of adapting to their new environment. Initial data analysis indicates that this process requires extensive social activity on the part of the new resident, involving negotiation of complex social conventions. The discussion focuses on two themes which have been identified from the data: constructing familiarity whereby participants use sometimes tenuous knowledge of people and places to make the home seem less strange, and managing the self, whereby familiarity is used as a means of permitting social conversation to take place without leaving residents open to the dangers of being intrusive. These two themes have relevance for the way in which new residents can be introduced to homes, and the way in which the social skills of older people are viewed.

In this article we present the results of a panel survey in which 242 men aged 40 to 55 were followed for approximately seven years after they became involuntarily unemployed. The study focused on reintegration probabilities of the older workers and on the question of their reaction to a situation of prolonged unemployment. The study shows that if policy is not changed, the probability of the reintegration of older, long-term unemployed persons into the labour force will remain extremely low. Re-entry via a ‘normally’ functioning labour market (formal application procedures and official job intermediaries) takes place almost exclusively during the first year after dismissal. If a new job is not found, a resigned feeling occurs among almost all of this older unemployed group. Most of the older people adjust to the new circumstances sooner or later. If one wishes to protect older persons from the trap of long-term unemployment (and in many cases total exclusion), more rapid interventions must be made, and reorientation and retraining efforts must be started sooner, before it is ‘too late’. From the employer’s point of view, there is not much interest in those who are still unemployed after one year.

Social constructionist approaches to the talk of older adults diagnosed as suffering from a dementing illness have emphasised the importance of analysing such talk in terms of its social function. Drawing on this work together with the increasing clinical impetus towards the development of psychotherapy in this area, this paper examines two sequences of stories produced during a psychotherapy group. These stories are seen as having two related functions: first, they enable individuals to explore the significance of their experiences and thus, it is argued, act as metaphors for the personal experience of having a dementing illness; and secondly they act as a means of creating a series of social identities. As such they serve as explanations of ‘what it is to lose one’s mind’ (Sutton 1994).

The focus in the United States on ‘setting limits’ to the provision of such services as health care for old people may be spreading to Europe. This article points up the empirical deficiencies in some of the unexamined assumptions in such proposals, especially the belief that an inordinate share of medical expenditures occur in the final weeks or months of elderly patients. The setting-limits doctrine is viewed as a subset of broader socio-political-ideological thrusts aimed at (or resulting in) anti-elderly, intergenerational-conflict policy proposals. Such proposals should be evaluated in terms of their social constructionist, partially contrived, and historically distorted bases. Apocalyptic gerontology needs to be weighed in terms of its moral implications.