This ageing of the population is occurring, to a greater or lesser extent, in all developed countries, and brings with it a variety of anxieties. One is how to pay for pensions when the number of pensioners is set to increase substantially relative to the numbers expected to be in employment. A second is the potential cost of health care, given that this seems to increase with the age of the individual. A third anxiety is how to pay for long-term care for those who have reached the point where they are unable to sustain themselves, or be sustained, in their own homes. And a fourth concern is the impact of an ageing population on economic growth and national competitiveness.

A number of commentators have drawn attention to these issues in recent years, with varying degrees of alarm, sometimes verging on panic. The commonest metaphor is the ‘demographic time bomb’, set to explode around 2030. Another metaphor, coined by a former US Secretary of Commerce, is the ‘massive iceberg’ looming ahead, where lurking beneath the waves of the unprecedented growth in the number of the elderly are ‘wrenching economic and social costs that will accompany this demographic transformation, costs that threaten to bankrupt even the greatest of powers, the United States included, unless they take action in time’.

After a jeremiad of this kind, it is salutary to turn to Phil Mullan, a progressive who believes this ‘time bomb’ to be imaginary. He points out that, historically, modern societies double their wealth about every twenty-five years. This kind of growth, projected across the next half-century, would dwarf the extra pension and other costs to society of more elderly dependants. Moreover, it is far from certain that extra years of life mean extra years of ill-health and dependency. Serious disease tends to be concentrated towards the end of life, so living longer may simply postpone the point of onset, without increasing the costs.

Mullan draws attention to the way in which the concept of ‘retirement’ has been created in the course of the twentieth century. Bismarck in 1889 introduced state pensions for those retiring at age 70, when life expectancy was about 50—so that the cost to the public purse was minimal. In Britain, the male pensionable age was reduced to 65 in 1925 to encourage people to stop working earlier and help bring about a reduction in the then high rate of unemployment. At the same time, pension entitlement was tied to retirement from work, so that old age became identified with moving to a new stage in life without remunerated employment. Before the introduction of pensions, two-thirds of men aged 65 and over were in full-time work.

So the phenomenon of ‘retirement’ is recent, and is a creation of the welfare state. The subsequent advent of occupational pensions has allowed retirement commonly to take place well before the formal age of pension entitlement. As we live longer and healthier lives, we find, paradoxically, that work runs out earlier. One likely response to the economic and financial anxieties associated with population ageing is to take advantage of this new reserve army of labour. The challenge is to develop institutional arrangements to make this possible.

What, then, of the origins of the time bomb anxieties? Mullan argues that demographic ageing came into prominence about two decades ago as a scapegoat for changes in society and the economy that have non-demographic causes, in particular the generalised slow-down in all Western economies after the oil price rises of the 1970s and difficulties financing public expenditure. Those on the political right used the threat of the ageing population to justify attempts to narrow the state’s economic role and to reform and curb welfare expenditure. Mullan goes on to suggest that the more recent obsession with ageing is a reflection of the current state of Western thought, widely perceived as dominated by a mood of nervousness, heightened risk awareness, and pessimism for the future.

Given his concern to develop the substance of his controversial thesis, Mullan does not attempt to substantiate his explanations for the growing preoccupation with ageing. There is certainly evidence that those on the political right have been particularly sensitive to the implications of demography for public expenditure and taxation. But it has to be said that many others have concerns for the economic and financial implications of population ageing, and that the professional literature as it exists does not put these to rest.

More generally, we need to cultivate the common ground where political science and gerontology overlap. Is ‘the politics of ageing’ a useful concept? Can we identify political actions in which age-based interests predominate over interests based on economic status, geography, class or even gender? Does ‘grey power’ exist, and will the demographic trend lend it weight? We need further and better analysis of the roles of all the actors—pressure groups, opinion-formers, parties and politicians, as well as of older people themselves in all their heterogeneity.