This year’s Siciliano Forum will focus on global aging–specifically healthy aging, an aging workforce, and shifting inter-generational relationships. I searched U Scholar Works on the subject of aging and found several results. The article “Why Generation(s) Matter(s) to Policy” by Susan McDaniel seemed relevant.
Professor McDaniel states that generation is “a unique kind of social location, premised on a dynamic interplay of birth time and the socio-political events occurring at crucial life course moments for [a] birth cohort. The importance of generation, in this view, is not the year of birth or the size of the birth cohort, but the social relevance of being born at a particular historical time in a given society.” She goes on to say that generation, as a concept, “opens policy to exploring who does what in relation to whom.” For example, looking at what kind of sacrifices one generation has made for another and what impact this would have on policy making. McDaniel indicates that this is an unusual approach to policy, yet is one that “provide[s] a sense of contribution and entitlement in [...] the expected transition into retirement at a particular or approximate age.”
For more information on the University of Utah’s Siciliano Forum, see http://www.csbs.utah.edu/siciliano_forum.html