Designed for teaching courses in global ageing or gerontology at various levels, this book offers an overview of major issues associated with societal and global ageing. Issues covered in ten chapters include: how the world population is ageing, how ageing is studied, the welfare state and ageing, demographic perspectives, disability, health and health care, long-term supports, work and retirement, families and care-giving, and the need for global leadership. Each chapter, except the last, concludes with an essay by a contributor different from the chapter authors, typically focused on a particular country or region of the world. In addition to the nine essays in the book, four chapters (which focus on health and health care, on long-term services, work and retirement, and families and care-giving) are also authored by writers other than the three authors whose names appear on the title page. A preponderance of the 18 total contributors are affiliated with Miami University in Ohio, the home university of the two lead authors, Kunkel and Brown.
Global Aging sets as one of its goals to be explicitly comparative across countries where possible. It alerts readers in the Preface and Chapter 1, and reasserts in the concluding chapter, that it seeks to take local ageing ‘on the road’ (p. 255). A second interconnected objective of the book is to show the diversity of ageing across the globe, both as individually experienced and as a societal phenomenon. In doing this, the myth of population ageing as a challenge that only more developed countries (MDCs) face is undercut. The overview of our ageing world, Chapter 1, sets the stage for the focus on particular aspects of ageing in the chapters that follow. It makes clear at the outset that population ageing is occurring in both MDCs and less developed countries (LDCs) and is contoured everywhere by demographics, culture, politics and economics, but in varying ways in different parts of the world. The chapter offers three case studies of China, Germany and Kenya, which show how different socio-political states respond to and plan for ageing of their populations.
Chapter 2 looks at the many challenges and opportunities involved in doing international comparative research on ageing, concluding that it is well worth it to surmount these obstacles given what we can learn. The third chapter addresses the welfare state in various parts of the world through the eyes of Tooncie, an 87-year-old widow living in the United States of America (USA). Her circumstances are shown to be different depending on the welfare regime in which she might live. It is an engaging approach, no doubt easy for student readers to understand. Chapter 4 explores how the shape of a population demographically can impact all aspects of life in a society. Here, the myth of population ageing as alarming for societies is dispelled; with acknowledgement that the challenges are greater in LDCs. Chapter 5 examines the illusory nature of disability as accompanying ageing. It both widens the lens to include various impairments routinely associated with ageing such as mobility, vision or cognitive difficulties, and narrows the discussion to provide realistic comparative examples of disability. Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 take on, respectively, different models of health care and public health, typologies of national policies for long-term care and services, issues of work and retirement across the globe, and how families address the ageing of relatives and providing care. Chapter 9 is important in looking at how communities and non-governmental organisations work with various states and families to provide care to ageing people. It opens with the lyrics of a lovely song.
Chapter 10 is particularly compelling in summing up 13 major themes that emerge in the book, and in offering readers the views of three global ageing experts from the USA, the Netherlands and the Philippines on major trends and themes.
The essays at the end of each chapter vary hugely in style and contribution. Essays by Ahmed on Bangladesh, by Whittington on Cuba and by Mwangi on Kenya are particularly strong in providing information perhaps new to the reader.
Each chapter is engaging with pictures and helpful subheadings, with discussion questions and keywords provided at the end of each of the substantive chapters (Chapters 2–8). There are remarkably few tables and figures, and many of the tables are word summaries, not numbers. The book includes at the end an excellent list of Web resources for further information. These features may perhaps add to the book's potential appeal to students. Although this is clearly a book written as a textbook for courses in global ageing, gerontology or similar courses that focus on ageing internationally, it can be more than that in its pooling of examples of ageing from around the world, and in the summing up of themes worth remembering in Chapter 10. It offers in one easily accessible place compelling examples and research threads worthy of pursuit.
If there is a limitation to this book, it also could be its strength. It is written by and for Americans, even though it works hard to be global and international. When case studies of other countries are provided, the reader is asked to hark back to the USA for lessons learned; an example of this plea made explicit is on p. 6. The plea at the end of the book is aimed at American students to look beyond and become global actors. The strength in this is recognition of one's prime audience and aiming directly to that audience.
In the interest of full disclosure, I wish to mention in concluding that I am co-editor with Zachary Zimmer of the book, Global Ageing in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities (Ashgate, 2013), in which I am co-author of two chapters. Zimmer is acknowledged in this book's Preface for his assistance, as is Dorly Deeg, an author in the McDaniel–Zimmer book.
