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Author/Editor(s):Paul Cann, Malcolm Dean
Format: Paperback, 192 pages; ISBN 9781847424112
Published: 02 Sep 2009
List price: £17.99

This is a book for our times: its wisdom and thoughtfulness will help us all adjust to life's changing patterns.
Dame Joan Bakewell, Voice of Older People

About This Book
For a shockingly high number of older people, growing older is not the media's soft-focus vision of fun times and fond grandchildren but a journey of loss: loss of work and opportunity to contribute, health and well-being, family and friends. Over two million older people are stuck in persistent poverty. The diseases and disabilities associated with growing older multiply with the dramatic ageing of the population, yet the response of communities and care systems is often inadequate and ageism still abounds. At least one million of our seniors feel society has left them behind and that their lives have been reduced to survival. "Unequal Ageing" analyses the vital dimensions of money, health, place, quality of life and identity, and demonstrates the gaps of treatment and outcomes between older and younger people, and between different groups of older people. This powerful book, written by leading experts in the field, provides strong evidence of the scale of current disadvantage in the UK and suggests actions that could begin to change the picture of unequal ageing.The book is aimed at all those with a serious interest in the unprecedented challenge of our ageing society. It will be of importance to policy-makers striving to develop workable solutions, to professionals responsible for implementing those solutions, to opinion-formers wishing to examine the way attitudes about ageing are shaped, and above all to older people themselves.

Author Biography
Paul Cann is former Director of Policy at Help the Aged. He is now Chief Executive of Age Concern, Oxfordshire. At Help the Aged he brought together research and policy, and he was particularly involved in Help the Aged's work on pensioner poverty, social exclusion and care issues. Malcolm Dean worked on The Guardian for 38 years as a roving reporter, social affairs leader-writer and an assistant editor.

Contents
How social age trumped social class? Too tight to mention: unequal income in older age; The uneven dividend: health and well-being in later life; No place like home? Housing inequality in later life; What does it mean to be old? A life worth living? Quality of life in older age. Why is ageing so unequal? Rewriting the story.

BGS Newsletter, November 2009
Issue 24 ISSN 1748-634000 24