Ageing: Which Future Opportunities

Today we are witnesses of a demographic revolution. The upsetting of demographic classes is beginning to be a crucial question for future reforms in political, social and medical fields. The decreasing of nativity and increasing of longevity are creating an imbalance in society. Because of this unbalanced situation researchers are starting to think about ageing, how to improve the quality of life, how to make ageing people an active part of society. As we will see later, the idea of the collapsing of the welfare system, of health care and in particular of the long-term system of pension schemes and in the meantime the economic crisis, the decrease of economic power and increasing of social and demographic inequalities are stressing political bodies to find an urgent solution. Despite criticism of the social system for the quality of life that is too “welfare”, we can also talk about active ageing people as they were called by van Dyk and Lessenich (2009), “new elderly” or potentially active citizens that can still be useful for the family and for the society at large.