Aus der Wissenschaft für die Politik

This essay is the last in a series written by Achim Goerres for the project “Ageing Democracies? Political Participation and Cultural Values Among the Elderly in Europe” financed by the Open Society Foundation. The complete project report with all essays and the reports written by the other project members can be found here. 

“With 20 million voters over the age of 50, isn’t it time politicians stopped just kissing babies?”

Age Concern England, 2005 British General Election Campaign

The above quotation is a typical example taken from an election campaign by an organisation representing the particular interests of elderly people. In many European countries, there are several of such organisations that provide social help or promote self-help for older people. These social old-age interest organisations tend to have at least small political offices that try to influence political outcomes. However, they are mostly social organisations providing club benefits to its members. There are no systematic analyses of these old age interest organisations across Europe yet. They tend to be much smaller in size and in political influence compared to the Association for Retired Persons in the United States, most likely due to Europe’s stronger trade unions. However, some of these organisations have a large number of members benefitting from various club goods, such as cheaper insurance. For instance, DaneAge in Denmark had 650,000 members in 2014 (28% of citizens aged 50 and over). The historical roots of these organisations do not lie in the dynamics of accelerated population ageing since the 1970s, but very often in the veterans’ organisations and pensioners’ organisations of the first half of the 20^th century (for details see Doyle 2015: chap. 3). Weiterlesen →