Demography

Advances in medicine - technological advances, illnesses can be treated.

Vaccinations were introduced in the 1920's preventing illnesses such as TB and whooping cough.

Increase in education - more aware of negative impacts of things such as smoking.

Laws - laws have been put in place to stop people from smoking in public places.

Campaigns - five a day campaigns to improve health.

Improved nutrition - different foods are more readily available now, people can have a more balanced diet.

Decline of dangerous professions such as mining.

Higher incomes allow a healthier life style.

Public services strain - more people needing health care, elderly people generally need more health care.

Changes to family structure - one person pensioners, possibly using one house per person.

Dependency ratio - the number of people who are dependent upon tax payers will increase.

Ageism - elderly people could receive negative prejudices.

Changes in women's positions - having an education, know their rights, may want jobs first.

Easily accesible contraception - contraception is more easily accesed so people have birth control options.

Decline in infant mortality rate - children are less likely to die, so people don't need to have as many children to account for this.

Children are an economic liability - children cost a lot, are dependent for longer and expect a lot more.

Child centredness - parents have fewer children so that they can lavish the ones they do have.

HOWEVER - there has been a slight increase lately, is this because off immigration and different cultures norms about child bearing.

Changing family structures - women are more likely to be free to go to work, creating dual income families.

Dependency ratio - there are being less births, and so there will be less people under 18 dependent upon tax payers. However, in the long run, there will be more elderly people and less tax payers.

Public services - fewer schools and maternity and child health services may be needed.

Push - war, poor sanitation, dictatorship, unemployment.

Pull - better quality of life, better weather, more jobs/higher paid jobs, democratic.

Impact of immigration on the age structure

Directly - immigrants are generally younger, thus lowering the average age.

Indirectly - being younger, immigrants are more fertile and thus create more babies.

The effect of immigration of the dependency ratio

Immigrants are more likely to be of working age, which helps to lower the dependency ratio.

However, they are more likely to have children because they are young, so increasing the ratio.

Finally, the longer a group settle in a country, the closer their fertility rate comes to the national average, reducing the overall impact.

According to Cohen, there are three types of migrant:

Citizens - have full citizenship rights. Since the 1970's, the UK has made it much harder to gain these rights.

Denizens - privilidges foreign nationals welcomed by the state e.g. billionaire company owners or highly paid employees of multinational companies.

Helots - the most exploited group. States and employers regard them as 'disposable units of labour'. They are usually found in poorly paid, unskilled jobs.

According to Vertovec, globalisation has lead to 'super-diversity', in which migrants come from a much wider range of countries.

Almost half of all migrants today are female.

Ehrenreich and Hochschild observe that care work, domestic work and sex work in the western world is often done by women from poor countries. This is a result of several trends:

1. The expansion of service occupations that traditionally employ woman in western countries has led to a demand for female labour.

2. Western woman have joined the labour force and are less willing/able to perform domestic labour.

3. Western men remain unwilling to perfom domestic labour.

4. The failure of the state to provide adequate childcare.

There is also a global transfer of womens emotional labour. For example, migrant nannies provide care and affection for their employers children at the expense of their own who are left behind.

Also, a lot of women enter the country as 'mail order brides'

Migrant identities

Hybrid identities - migrants may develop hybrid identities made up of two or more different sources. For example, Eade found that second generation Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain first considered themselves to be Muslim, then Bengali, then British.

Transnational identities

Globalisation has created more diverse migration patterns, with back and forth movements of people. As a result, migrants are less likely to see themselves as belonging completely to one culture or country. Instead, they may develop 'neither nor' identities.

States now have policies that seek to control immigration, absorb migrants into society and deal with increaed ethnic and cultural diversity.

Assimilation was the first state policy to approach immigration. It encouraged migrants to to adopt the language, values ad customs of the host culture to make them 'like us'.

Multiculturalism accepts that migrants may wish to retain a seperate cultural identity. However, in practice, this acceptance may be limited to more superficial aspects of cultural diversity.

For example, Eriken distinguishes between shallow diversity and deep diversity.

Shallow diversity - such as regarding chicken tikka masala as Britain's national dish, is acceptable to the state.

Deep diversity - such as arranged marriages or the vieling of women, is not acceptable to the state.

Modern society and old age

Many sociologists argue that ageism is the result of structured dependency - the old are largely excluded from paid work, leaving the economically dependent upon their families or the state.

In modern society, our identity and status are largely determined by our role in production. Those excluded from working by compulsory retirement have a dependent status and a stigmatised identity.

The Marxist Phillipson argues that the old are no longer of use to capitalist society because they are no longer productive. So, society is unwilling to care from them and support them, leaving the family burdened with this job.

Postmodern society and old age

Post modernists believe that it is consumption, not production, that gives us our identity.As Hunt argues, this means we can choose a lifestyle and identity regardless of our age. As a result, the eldery become a mark for 'body maintenance' or 'rejuvinating' goods. These trends break down ageist stereotypes found in society.