Overcoming Inequalities and Promoting Sustainability: Opportunities and Challenges for Ageing Societies
For several years, both the scientific community and policymakers recognised inequalities of older people as one of the main challenges to be dealt with to ensure social sustainability and dignified ageing for all individuals. Such a challenge has become even more crucial in the wake of the pandemic crisis. Still, proper solutions at the policy levels have to be found, and older people with more individual or contextual resources (meaning by this not only economic resources but also health conditions, educational level, place of living, family and social resources etc.) are those who are most likely to age well. The urgency of addressing inequalities in later life – as well as in a life course perspective – has also been underlined recently by the United Nations (https://unece.org/info/Population/events/362733) through the Madrid International Plan of Action of Ageing (MIPAA) and its Regional Implementation Strategy (RIS), using the ten main Commitments identified by the Plan itself and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development. The renewed political commitment around the issue of inequalities in ageing seems to show that the identification of solutions for overcoming them and for providing opportunities to all older people for a more sustainable ageing society is receiving more attention and cannot, therefore, be deferred any longer, in any of the social and economic spheres linked to ageing. Among other critical contemporary themes in this respect, the following are currently playing a pivotal role: the promotion of active and healthy ageing; the provision of quality long-term care; the increasing use of technology; the effects of climate change; the management of older people in emergencies. In this regard, a possible overarching model to address systematic inequality in later life is the mainstreaming ageing perspective, as suggested by the UNECE through the MIPAA commitment 1 (https://unece.org/population/publications/guidelines-mainstreaming-ageing). This means, on the one hand, avoiding the classic policy-silos approach in ageing issues by involving policymakers of all policy fields; and, on the other hand (as also underlined by SDG 17, Target 17. H), promoting private and civil society participation through co-decisional tools, being these tools highly effective to guarantee sustainable and innovative policy solutions. Mainstreaming the ageing perspective also means analysing the process of ageing and inequalities with a life-course approach, considering the interdependencies between biological, social, psychological and institutional factors and the cumulative processes of social advantages and/or disadvantages from the earliest stages of life.