This book is an early product of the attempt to persuade states to rise to the opportunities and challenges of ageing populations in policy action and supporting analysis. David Coleman writes in this collection: ‘The countries of the developed world face a future of uncertainty and there is considerable diversity between countries’ (p. 107). The short period of an age structure with low dependency ratios is ending and will not return. He argues that we shall have to make better use of what we will have in many ways, and no single policy lever will be sufficiently powerful to achieve the changes needed to avoid substantial loss of welfare. Financial and ‘social’ sustainability are at the heart of the challenge. In 2002, the Secretary General of the United Nations commented that ‘ageing has not been seen in its revolutionary' terms, restructuring the entire life course and the socio-economic and cultural landscape’ (chapter by Marin and Zaidi: 68). The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing set out to help to mainstream ageing in policy-making by means of a regional implementation strategy. The strategy included the development of indicators for monitoring progress. One device was a conference organised by the European Centre at Vienna in 2004. This book contains its revised working papers.

The contents contain much important material and focus mainly on two of three policy areas for which the editors suggest should be prioritised for the improvement of financial and social sustainability: publicly-provided pensions, and extending the working life in line with longer and healthier living. There are meaty analyses of aspects of these. One topic is labour-market participation, early retirement and social security arrangements. Concepts are clarified. There is discussion of equity and defined-contribution pensions schemes. Accounts are given of policy developments in some countries. Particularly interesting is Rurup's analysis of the German attempt to move towards sustainability and greater inter-generational equity in changes such as the Sustainability Act 2004 and other measures designed to increase flexibility. The accounts compare dilemmas created by alternative policies, and policy responses to them; for example, losses caused by policy changes to the most vulnerable and partial compensation by targeted interventions. Other essays illustrate how diversity and change are making some of the traditional foci for collecting and analysing evidence too narrow; for instance, one by Richard Rose on the implications of the rising population of retired households with double incomes (DIPPYs) and a plurality of pension sources; and another by Zaidi, Rake, Falkingham and Gustaffson about the volatility in post-retirement income.

What the editors consider to be the third area is improving ‘welfare, wellbeing and satisfaction’ among people receiving long-term care, which they think raises more difficult policy dilemmas. The book does not, however, contain direct and thorough analyses of either policy development or of data and methodologies for using them to indicate overall performance and trends in demand and costs. Most of the volume's papers include references to income maintenance, the derivation of indicators of system efficiency, and the incidence of costs and benefits on stakeholders, but by contrast there is no mention of using estimates of the relationships between service mixes, levels and costs to stakeholders, or of indicators of contributions to quality of life and care for long-term care for service systems covering the field. Surely these are significant for the development of indicators of policy performance. Again there is no mention of the methodologies for making projections of the demand, supply and costs of long-term care, also in routine use in policy analysis and planning. This is not to deny that some of the papers could most usefully contribute to an international system for monitoring long-term care. An example is Robine and Jagger's analysis of a driver of need and demand, ‘healthy life expectancy’. The contribution of some other papers is interesting but less direct. An example is Lelke's demonstration that the U-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction when education and income and other personal circumstances are controlled arises from lifecycle events rather than cohort effects. Life satisfaction and quality of life are thus recognised, though there is insufficient discussion of this compared with other sections of the constructive reconciliation of material and King Jigme Singye Wangchuck's maxim for Bhutan of ‘gross national happiness’; a gap made more obvious by recent attention to these in several social sciences and the proliferation of wellbeing agenda policies by one name or another.

So the essays provide some evidence to tackle narrower questions, the answers to which might contribute to policy improvement. The collection will interest a wide range of readers for another reason: it is a cornucopia of numbers and elegant graphs useful for all sorts of purposes other than a few lines of policy analysis, demographic doom-saying (and, in the case of the entertainingly macabre reductio ad absurdum projections, social science descendents of Tom Lehrer). Also the demonstration in some essays that there are oases of knowledge makes the reader think of the vastness of the deserts beyond, and that the state of the agriculture is often primitive even if the oases seem fertile. Compare with the variety and fast evolution of knowledge reflected in the Stern Report on that other challenge, climate change and its consequences. No doubt we would find it difficult to handle that degree of variety (and its costs) but we certainly need much more than we have: tests of sensitivity of predictions and projections to different interpretations of questions; different perceptions of causal linkage; different evidential bases; and different techniques of analysis. Also we need a faster development in the state of the art, and faster replacement of yesterday's by today's estimates. This is important because it is a prerequisite for the production of evidence and analysis that fits the kind of policy systems which it is the aim of mainstreaming to create: continuous receptiveness to new ideas and realities; continuous revision in the prioritisation of ends and means; predictions and projections doing no more than merely provisionally suggesting the direction and magnitude of needed adaptations; not of defining states at which we are expected to arrive. This is not an unrealistic aim. We can see an acceleration of development in some streams in some countries. Perhaps the same is true about policy adaptation itself. Some of the accounts of policy development and consequences may well induce in readers weltschmerz [world weariness], even leibschmerzen [stomach pain]. But there are also signs of policy learning, and we can hope that it will accelerate and spread with the necessarily slow reinterpretation of realities as the United Nations' Secretary General's perception of ageing as a revolutionary force spreads.

This book has contributions that many readers will find useful. They highlight the gaps in knowledge required to achieve the United Nations' goals and make useful suggestions. The book illustrates the need to mainstream ageing in policy-making, not that all the consequences will be welcomed. Greater policy mainstreaming requires greater political mainstreaming. The calculus of political weights ends differently from the calculus of ghetto-structured policy. The challenges of managing that are outside the remit of the book.