A comparative evaluation of the socio-economic characteristics of the elderly in Malta : implications for social policy

Abstract

The world's population is aging. And so is Malta's, at a faster rate. The United Nations estimate that 13.7% of the world's population will be sixty and over in the year 2025. This increase has created an unprecedented interest in the study of old age, and has given rise to expansions in Gerontology and Geriatrics and in all those sciences that, directly or indirectly, impinged on old age. Interest in old age, and in the fate of elderly persons can be traced back to time immemorial: the place of the elderly in a particular culture can in fact be used as an indicator of the relative complexity of that culture, of the need of the family structure to rest on the received wisdom of previous generations for areas ranging from political to production structures, and on the extent of emancipation enjoyed by the younger generations. Old age has been written about at length, and it is no wonder that Cicero's De Senectute has remained to be remembered as a synthesis of classical thought on the subject.