THE PROBLEM OF AGING IN EUROPE

"Focused on aging". This newspaper headline (Cañas, May 20, 2014). one of many, serves as an
example: human aging is on the European public agenda. And it is in different senses: for some, as an
achievement, for others. as a challenge: for some, as worrying and even as a problem. And it is with
speeches that use in their argument what we could call scientific evidence, coming from different
disciplinary fields, especially medicine, psychology, economics, sociology and demography. Although
if we refer to the consideration of aging as a social phenomenon, perhaps demography is the most
used to lay the foundations of the problem: low fertility, the delay in the average age of childbearing,
increasing life expectancy and high rates Dependency-it is announced to us will make part of our

current health care, social protection and pension systems unfeasible, in short, the welfare state.
Taking into account the demographic background but connecting it with the sociological imagination,
the thesis on which this chapter is based is that the emergence of old age and aging as a social
problem in Europe is the result of social work on some of the repercussions that certain
transformations associated with the biological aging of bodies and minds-and demographics-of the
age structure of populations-can have on our lives in common. These repercussions, understood as
possible disorders, have been publicly formulated and evoked, legitimized and, to a certain extent,
imposed by those who, having the capacity to do so, have taken part in the processes necessary to
you felt manage to display your visions and interests in this regard. Finally, processes and forms of
institutionalization (in academic studies, public policies and social programs) have ordered, in part,
the possible interventions, with normative recommendations about what should be done.

THE DECONTEXTUALISATION OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM

Let's begin by reviewing some keys to the demographic background of the problematization of aging,
which tends to be considered in the dominant discourses as a process resulting from a high life
expectancy combined with low fertility. something that characterizes the most developed countries.
However, this approach demonstrates a complex decontextualization of demographic evolution.

On one side. it is a historical and geographical decontextualization. In a historical sense, because it

tends to separate the present from a past, of more than two centuries, necessary for its full
understanding, and from a future that we must not only project based on recent results but as a
purpose, as we what we would like to happen and not just as what can happen. In addition, this
projection tends to be seen as something typical of the most developed countries, regardless of what
happens in the rest of the world (Alfageme. 2005: 42).

On the other hand, in the analysis of demographic aging at a European and global level, a second
process of decontextualization operates, this time social and economic. The treatment of
demographic aging as an independent variable that, by itself, is striking. it determines the social and
economic risks that our world faces, that is, a social model and a way of politically articulating the
social and economic relations that are characteristic, specifically, of Europe.

HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL DECONTEXTUALIZATION

To understand the idea of the historical and geographical decontextualization of the evolution of the
population, we need to remember, very briefly, how it has been produced in the long term and with
a global perspective. The demographic story, still ongoing, is that of a true revolution that is normally
called the demographic transition. Let us recall the approximate sequence of the changes produced:
a) the improvement of survival, especially in the early ages, is the driving factor of such a
demographic revolution: b) its immediate consequence is the increase in the rate of population
growth and rejuvenation demographic structures, with an extraordinary growth in the demographic
dependency ratio, especially in less developed countries, due to the high number of children; c) the
decline in fertility is surely a consequence of the decline in mortality and. at the same time, a solution
to excessive demographic growth and to structures that are too young and dependent and d) the
medium-term effect is the aging of the population, due to the decrease in the relative presence of
children, to which now has been added the greater survival of the oldest, a recent phenomenon
because , for it to occur, life expectancy must be previously high and fertility low.

As a result of these changes, there are currently just over 7 billion people in the world, compared to
just over 1 billion two centuries ago. In addition, it is estimated that, according to the most plausible
hypotheses, by the end of this century the figure will have exceeded 10,000 million, reaching an
approximately stationary situation. For this reason, it is striking that if a quarter of a century ago the
excessive growth of the world population was the main demographic problem, it has lost its apparent
priority, at least in public opinion, to be replaced by demographic aging, It is presented as a regional
rather than a global problem.

There is a fact that reveals in a very explanatory way some of the consequences of the construction
process of aging as a problem in the developed world: the widespread idea that the demographic
dependency relationship, which occurs between dependent age groups Compared to those of active
age, it is much higher in the most developed countries. The reality is the opposite: it is the less
developed states that have the highest demographic dependency ratio, for the simple reason that
they are much younger -in some less developed countries minors have reached two out of every
three inhabitants- For the majority of Europeans. this problem of dependency among the youngest is
almost invisible because dependency is usually illustrated with reference to the elderly but almost
never to children (Swanson, 2008). Table i highlights the year around which a turning point in the
dependency indices occurs: the maximum dependency is reached throughout the world in 1965, in
the European Union (EU) in 1970 and in the least developed in 1985. to decrease later. In the EU,
however, we are in a new turning point at which dependency begins to increase again Today. there
are approximately 8% of people aged 65 and over on the planet. For every person of non-active age
there are two of active age. This relationship has not stopped increasing since 1950, being
increasingly favorable to active ages. What has changed has been the composition of those of
dependent age, with fewer children and more elderly people. For this reason, there are 32 older
people for every 100 children when, in the middle of the 20th century. that figure was half. In any
case, we are very far from having, on a global scale, a problem of aging or demographic dependency.

To treat aging as a risk it is necessary to isolate populations. from its broader historical and
geographical context, which means, on the one hand, that demographic aging is an inevitable
consequence of these processes of change, which are undoubtedly positive. Today, all populations
are aging, as indicated by some of the indicators in Table 1. Fortunately, all of them are already in the
bioe phases that we mentioned earlier. Hence, the Spanish demographer Julio Pérez Diaz (2011: 62)
has stated that "we must not continue to see the aging of the population, which is just one
expression of the productive revolution and probably the greatest achievement of humanity in its
entire history, as if it were our enemy." It is possible that we Europeans, among others. have gone
too far slowed in terms of fertility decline, but globally this is still a minor problem.For example, in
the Spanish case, a population with sufficient fertility to guarantee the replacement of generations
and with a high life expectancy Similar to the current one, one of the highest in the world, it would
have in the long term, and with zero growth, a percentage of people over 65 years of age close to
23%; however, in the last Spanish census that percentage is still 18%. .

On the other hand, considering aging as an imminent risk means forgetting that national populations
are open systems, subject to entries and exits from abroad. Proof of this is the little importance given
to migration as a compensation mechanism for eventual imbalances between countries. If there is a
variable that has always been present and that has been a determinant of the European population
and of the most developed countries in the last two centuries, that is migration, a component that
requires a global perspective. In demographic projections, which play a fundamental role in the
construction of the aging problem. Migrations are rarely given the prominence they deserve. How
can projections predicting a drastic decline in the European population appear again and again? Well,
ignoring the enormous immigration pressure that, even in times of crisis, occurs at its borders, and
isolating that population from the context in which it evolves and with which it interacts, which
makes a good part of such projections unrealistic ( Wilson,Sobotka, Williamson, & Boyle, 2013). Thus,
geographic decontextualization becomes patent again.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DECONTEXTUALIZATION

Analyzing the demographic evolution, it is one thing to say that the population is aging and quite
another to conclude how many older people there are. To analyze aging, we usually either compare
the extreme age groups -the oldest and the youngest-, or we calculate the percentage that the oldest
group represents out of the total. Where we place the demarcation limits of these groups almost
never has an impact on the demographic evidence of the aging trend: however, it does have an
impact on the measurement of the degree of aging.

Demography does not have its own conceptual instruments to count the number of elderly people
because it does not have them to say who is or is not old. What it does is limit itself to counting those
who are socially considered old. adults or children. Sociology tries, as we will see, to identify the
institutional limits of such ages to the extent that age groups can indicate different stages of the life
course. Basically, it is the retirement and pension systems that establish the beginning of old age in
the most developed countries; For this reason, the proportion of older persons and the aging and
dependency indices calculated by demography would immediately change with the change in these
two institutions.

If the proportion of older people in a stationary population with a life expectancy of B5 years is
calculated for those aged 70 and over -instead of for those aged 65 and over-, said proportion is
reduced by more than 5 percentage points (of 24.5 to 19.0). The degree of aging, in the sense of how
many older people there are, is not a demographic measure but a social one, and as such it changes
every time the social definition of old age does, even if the population is the same. The aging process
we have been talking about has an obvious demographic component. but its quantification is not of a
demographic nature. Hence the need for demography and the sociology of aging to go hand in hand:
the former to characterize what is concrete, which is the part of the population socially produced as
aged Given that after the problem of aging what beats is the sustainability of the pension system, the
institutional definition of the age limits is essential. It is not only an important issue socially but also
economically from the point of view of dependency, the key is not only the relationship between
demographic age groups but also between socially and economically dependent or independent
groups. Economic dependency, which is what really matters in terms of the sustainability of the
welfare state, is not equivalent to demographic dependency, which is what we have just analysed.

There are several changes that have occurred in the EU over the years in economic activity and
employment that determine the evolution of the contributing population, which is, ultimately. the
relevant one for the purposes of the pension system. In the first place, the decrease in activity rates
as a consequence of the early abandonment of activity at advanced ages in the OECD, some 8 years
in the case of men. between the mid-1970s and the outbreak of the 2007 crisis (Gonde-Ruiz and
González, 2010)-and the delay in the entry of young people into active life-in the same period,
approximately another 8 years. Secondly, the incorporation of women into the labor market, to a
large extent thanks to the fact that the fertility decline has freed up a labor force available for
economic production and not only for reproduction, which has brought with it, in four decades, an
increase of more than 20 points in the activity rate of women to reach 67% in 2013 in the EU (OECD,
2015). In third place. the incorporation into the labor market of the immigrant population, at first
only in the northern European countries, then also in the southern ones, raising activity rates and,
above all. the employed forces. Fourth, the evolution of employment and unemployment that
accompanies economic cycles. In addition, what is relevant from the point of view of the
sustainability of the pension system is formal employment, which contributes, not just any type of
employment.

The set of these four accumulated transformations have produced variations in the economic
dependency ratio greater than those derived from demographic evolution. The first factor tends to
increase dependency, by shortening working life, more than the effect derived from the increase in
life expectancy at age 65, which has been a little over 6 years. However, the second and third factors
make it decrease. The fourth, linked to the evolution of employment and unemployment according
to the economic cycle, works in both directions, and its importance could hardly be exaggerated. In
Spain, from 2007 to February 2015, the decrease in the number of Social Security affiliates (more
than two and a half million contributors) far exceeds the increase in pensioners (just over 850,000
people) (Ministry of Employment and Security Social. 2015a 2015b).

However, in social, political and technical discourses, too. According to scientists, demographic aging
appears as a key factor to which a causal power is attributed that is not recognized to economic and
social factors. The importance given to demographic aging, its obviousness as a trend, supported by
its historical and geographical decontextualization and its apparent causal efficacy. seem to make
further insight unnecessary. The demographic and its impact on the sustainability of an entire model
of society are naturalized. Be obvious, usi. The most important thing is that the effects that
demographic evolution has on this model depend on multiple social and economic mediations to
which it is necessary. pay much more attention. We are facing an effect of naturalization of the social
that makes the ultimate causes of the difficulties of the welfare system rest on something as
apparently natural as aging.

SOCIOLOGICAL KEYS IN THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF OLD AGE THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE
THIRD AGE

From demography we turn to sociology. Perhaps the first formulation of aging as a problem
materialized in the invention of old age as a singular stage of the typical life cycle of people. This
invention has its roots in the first scientific studies on human aging in the hands of geriatrics, at the
dawn of the 20th century. The disciplines corresponding to the social sciences would be incorporated
much later, with a zenith -the birth of gerontology in the 1940s. From that moment we can talk
about human aging as a topic on the agenda of social analysis, of done. Between 1950 and 1960,
more scientific literature on aging was published than all that had been produced in the previous 115
years (Birren and Clayton, 1975, cited in Katz, 1996).

From the sociological point of view, old age cannot be considered simply a state that comes with age
(Lenoir, 1993), but rather a result of the intersection of actions and social orders. What social
actions? In what social orders? We have already alluded to a disciplinary approach to human aging in
its most advanced stage, starting with geriatrics, whose focus was on the diseases and deficits typical
of that stage. But we can also refer to actions to manage power resources associated with social class
or generational positions: issues such as obedience and respect for older people as a social norm to
abide by, or the different valuation of the way of aging applied to those who occupy privileged class
positions, for example, would be within this type of action. And, of course, there is the role of states
and public policies in this regard, in fact, Phillipson and Baars (2007) have explained that, at least in
North America and Western Europe. the conception of aging as a social problem began to be
considered after the Second World War and that aging was identified as a new social problem that
could be addressed through the development or consolidation of pension systems and, more
generally, through the construction of the welfare state (p. 70).

In this last logic there is an evident productive-economic component: aging as a new social problem
arises from the question of what to do with workers who have ceased to be productive. The
European response was the invention of retirement systems, which opened the door to a
differentiated appreciation of the lives of workers before and after their productive period and, with
it, helped shape a new age class. , which would later be converted into a distinct demographic and
social group (Lenoir, 1993). In the process of autonomization of the third age. Lenoir points out the
importance of the appearance of institutions and agents specifically dedicated todeal with old age as
a stage. The increase in such institutions (homes and social security, for example) and agents
(geriatricians and psychologists, among others) has led to the reconfiguration of family functions and
obligations with respect to older family members. In this sense, perhaps the most outstanding issue
is the changes that are being observed in the organization and provision of care for these people
(Roca, 2014).

This institutionalization of old age is parallel to that of childhood and to the lengthening process of
adolescence and youth. The first, due, above all. to the universalization of compulsory and free
education: the second, by the extension, throughout almost the entire social space, of non-
compulsory education (secondary and university). Once the category of third age was created -the
last, together with childhood/youth and adulthood, of the three most standardized ages in the
European context until the last century- it could already be examined, among others, by the
sociological imagination. Concepts, models, theories, observations. programs and policies on old age,
first, and on aging, later. they would follow next.

TO AGE SIMPLIFICATION

Sociological analyzes have privileged the use of chronological age as an independent variable and
access route to the study of aging, often with the consequent neglect of social structure (Rilevy Riley,
1999). It is not age, but the interrelationship between lives and social structures in the broad sense,
that should have occupied the center of attention of the sociological investigation of aging. Using
chronology outside of the social order would be equivalent to holding that two people from. let's say,
15 years have to be considered without further ado as belonging to the same social group. However,
diversity and heterogeneity only increase with age, both outside and, above all, within each cohort
(Ferraro, 2006).
It can be argued that qualifying aging as a problem based on the use of chronological ages to
understand who and how we age biases the analysis towards the ascribed, the attributive and
individual and not towards the relational. more typical of the sociological perspective. Aging has
relational elements that are lost when its concept is reduced to the idea of having a birthday.
However, to age socially it is not enough to have a birthday, you have to get older or old socially
speaking (Sánchez and Diaz, 2009). Not all changes observed as age varies are changes due to or
connected with aging: not all age problems are aging problems and vice versa. That if, part of the
sociological investigations have put at their service the chronological age as an exemplary
independent variable- to propose explanations and, above all, to build arguments around aging using
any analysis (demographic, economic or other). that also uses age as a criterion for demarcating the
old.

THE AGING. STAGE OR PROCESS?

The construction of aging as a problem also has to do with the predilection for considering as a stage
what can be seen as a process. And although there are those who are in favor of using a life course
perspective when observing, explaining and interpreting aging, in practice the problematization is
reduced in many cases to what are known as problems of older people -or of a part of them- Hence
the need to specify who these people are so that the object of sociological study is clearly delimited
from the beginning. If, as we said before, demography has not conceptualized who are the people
who are the protagonists of the supposed problem of aging, sociology has done so, albeit with
insufficient depth: either it is all the people who are in their old age or those of a certain
chronological age. With this, the idea of aging as a process is left aside or, at least, placed in the
background.

How important is the consideration of aging as a stage or as a process with regard to its
problematization? In the first case, aging is a stage of the life cycle-, the social group most affected by
the problem -elderly and old people- is one, delimited and differentiable: therefore, the study of the
problem has to do with what happens to those people or what the actions of those people cause to
the rest. Depending on how it is considered, older people can appear as victims of the aging problem,
for example, being the target of specific social discrimination-or they can start to be considered part
of the causes of the problem-for example. when talking about the growing and unsustainable
demand for health services by the elderly. No matter how you look at it, the idea of stage is the one
that imposes the ways of explaining the rules and resources necessary to understand who the old are
and how they act.

However, if we consider aging as a process throughout life, the problem would no longer be just for a
group of people but for everyone, since one gets old while living consequently, any subject is a
candidate to be victim or responsible This turns the stage of the problem into a more unmanageable
and complex task because it is not inherent to a moment. concrete nor. As we have seen before, at
certain ages, social actions and orders can produce aging in any social space and in relation to any
actor. Thus, aging, considered as a social phenomenon, would only be the attention that we pay and
the meanings and interpretations that we grant to the passage of time when it comes to organizing
ourselves individually and collectively in society. Along these lines are those who bet on a transition
from a sociology of old age to a sociology of the life course, even with the implicit risk that this
entails of a certain dissolution of the object of study (Angel and Settersten, 2011: 671).
THE PROBLEM IN THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH AGENDA

Aging affects many aspects of personal, family and social life, and in Europe it takes on greater
dimensions than anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Japan). During the last decades,
various issues related to this process have been increasingly part of the European research agenda
(Wahl. Deeg and Litwin. 2013). We have reviewed the contents of the main international journals
specialized in the sociological study of aging for five years - from January 2010 to February 2015 -
with a clear conclusion: aging is of interest, above all. the social problems associated with it and,
especially, those related to health. The great challenge that appears in the research agenda with
more frequency is how to face the needs of a growing number of people who will suffer illnesses or
disabilities. A multitude of investigations deal with specific health problems of the elderly:
depression, dementia or Alzheimer's, for example. It has also been investigated about older people
with weak physical health, about those who lose sensory faculties or suffer from intellectual
disabilities or other mental disorders. They are works that analyze, in general. how these diseases
affect people and their families, what consequences they have and with what resources they deal
with them.

In this sense, public care policies for the elderly in fragile health are the subject of priority interest.
Various studies deal with the situation of those who receive care and services in institutions with the
intervention of professionals in the provision of care services: there are some studies that compare
the provision of care at home and in institutions, others that consider private contracting of help and
Increasingly, there are those who value the contribution of immigrant workers to care. There are also
studies on attitudes and family strategies to combine informal care with that offered by institutions
or people contracted for this purpose. Family support for older people with health problems receives
special attention, however. Very little has been investigated about the informal care provided by
friends or neighbors.

Most of the studies on intergenerational relationships are oriented towards the family and, precisely,
towards the issue of informal support for sick older people. For example, the sociological profile of
those who are more likely to provide this support and the degree to which care tasks are shared
among family members have been analysed: the assessment made by those who participate in them
and its consequences at different levels and Some work even warns of the risk of abuse towards the
elderly that sometimes exists in the exercise of caregiving activity. Some aspects related to
retirement have also been analysed, such as the age at which one wishes to leave the labor market,
the planning of the process. the factors that determine it, the decision to retire early or the social
perception of retirement. Other studies have dealt with people's adaptation to retirement, for
example having a greater commitment to family and society. participating in sports activities or even
opting for post-retirement self-employment. In this sense, a frequent object of study in the research
agenda are the ways of life of the elderly, which have been changing for decades; these ways are
usually treated, however. linked to problems such as loneliness, isolation or vulnerability, in the case
of living alone or with health-related needs, in the case of institutionalized people. The incidence of
the feeling of loneliness in the elderly is a frequent theme that is related to the degree of social
support they have, with their way of life or with several factors at the same time. Widowhood, its
consequences and the adaptation strategies adopted by the people who experience it, is also a
frequently addressed topic: it is not so much, however, the married life of the elderly and little
research has been done on the uniqueness of single older people.

In short, and according to the published research agenda, sociology, infected by geriatric and
psychological antecedents, has devoted too much effort to building an imaginary of old age
understood, above all, as a time of loss. fragility and vulnerability. In this regard, the results of a
Delphi study on the state of the sociology of old age in Spain carried out in 2013 (Sánchezy López,
2015) may be clarifying, in which a group of sociologists were asked which, in order of importance,
were the five most relevant issues on the teaching-research agenda in this field. The responses were
as follows: inequality (inequalities of any kind related to old age, social exclusion, diversity and
equity, old age and social class, rights and services in the welfare state), dependency (issues related
to fragility, vulnerability and dependency, loneliness and loss of family relationships, and care
provision), intergenerational relationships (relations between generations both inside and outside
the family context, intergenerational family support networks, role of grandparents in the family)
and, therefore, Lastly, work (employment and unemployment in old age, early retirement and
retirement processes). As we can see, attention to what is unfavorable and deficient continues to be
placed ahead in the research agenda.

FROM OLD AGE TO AGING AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM

Talking about aging as a social problem requires that someone perceive aging as an indescribable,
threatening, harmful situation. In addition, it is necessary that someone--one or several agents-
propose such a construction, make it visible and find an echo in the social structure. There are no
social problems kept alone. unless they are individuals who occupy positions in the social system that
legitimize them for the definition of what is or is not a social problem.

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF AGING AS A PROBLEM

Regarding the processes of recognition, legitimization and institutionalization, some international

actors have played a particularly leading role. For example. United Nations. At the beginning of the
1980s, the first World Assembly on Aging, convened by the United Nations, approved an
International Plan of Action with which it was intended to "promote an adequate international
response to the problems of aging through measures for the establishment of the new international
economic order and the increase in international technical cooperation activities" (United Nations.
1983: 5). The Plan distinguished between humanitarian ("relating to the particular needs of the
elderly") and development problems ("referring to the socioeconomic consequences of population
aging, which can be defined as an increase in the proportion of people of advanced age in the total
population.) In this last regard, problems related to the effects of aging on production, consumption,
savings, investments and on social and economic conditions in general were addressed, given the
growth rate of dependency of the elderly. Of course, at that time there was no doubt that there was
a problem ahead, which was not only one of protection and provision of services, but also of the
activity and participation of the elderly population ( United Nations 1983: 10). Twenty years later, in
Madrid, the new International Plan of Action resulting from the Second World Assembly on Aging
proposed a change in the matter, the problem was not aging but some of its consequences: lack of
resources or sustainability of pension systems, for example (United Nations, 2002: 12). On the other
hand, in 2002 it was possible to verify a personalization in the construction of the problem: more
than aging as a problem, they had come to talk about some problems (availability of resources,
mental health, transportation in rural areas, etc. ) of older people. And it was insisted, on the other
hand, that these problems implied challenges and challenges but, at the same time, they offered us
opportunities (United Nations, 2002: 82. What did not seem to have changed was the insistence that
the financing of social services and social protection systems was in serious danger, that is, that the
problem related to aging was, basically and above all, a question of income, expenses and financing,
that is, an economic question.
In the case of Europe, in 2006, the European Commission clearly opted for a double strategy of
recognition of aging as something fundamentally positive but, at the same time, with obvious
economic effects on the real possibilities of health care benefits. welfare state services: "Member
states face more a pension problem than an aging problem" (European Commission. 2006: 14). In
line with this economistic discourse, in 2012 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned of the
impact of what it called "longevity risk". understood as the financial risk that governments and
pension systems face insofar as social security costs are going to grow more than initially thought
(International Monetary Fund, 2012). The fact that in some parts of the planet people "live three
years longer than expected" - which, according to the IMF, is new proof that demographic estimates
in this regard are wrong - could mean a growth of 50 % of the already high costs associated with
ageing. Once again, the problem of aging, even acknowledging the benefits that greater longevity
brings to individuals and society, is posed as a budgetary problem due to lack of financing. Aging has
increasingly become a heavy burden. According to this, currently the financing problem described by

the IMF has. so. two fundamental roots: the payment of social security and retirement pensions. In
sa review of the sociology of aging. Wilson (2007) acknowledges that. The aging of the population is
often exaggerated as a social problem, especially by more economic approaches. There are abundant
examples of analysis and proposals from the technical and scientific spheres that affect the need to
reform pension systems, an imperative that almost always refers to demographic change (Barry
Diamond, 2012), precisely the background that we began by talking about. . In Spain there are
abundant works that warn of the danger that demographic aging poses for the sustainability of the
basic institutions of the welfare state and, specifically, of the pension systems. As an illustration,
some of the analyzes of FEDEA, or of authors linked to it, show that such approaches come from afar
and that they have occurred in all kinds of phases of the Spanish economic cycle, at the end of a crisis
(Ilerce, 1994). , at a time of boom (Conde Ruiz and Alonso Meseguer, 2004) or in full recession
(FEDEA. 2010) Almost all of these analyzes and proposals are based on perspectives on the future
population. However, they do not normally differentiate between forecasts that claim to predict the
near future and projections that can only claim to be.

say what would happen if certain hypotheses were fulfilled in the future in fact, that future is distant.
such hypotheses can never predict what will happen. The way in which these hypotheses are
constructed is decisive. However, the projections are conditional and that conditionality is almost
never emphasized -for example. emphasizing that these projections need current trends to hold. In
addition, the projections have a prescriptive value: they tell us if we want to avoid that possible
future, or its social or economic consequences. we have to act. Thus, the hypotheses used in the
projections are those that mark the path of i

SOME CRITICAL APPROACHES

However. The fact that European politics insists on the discourse of the need to introduce cuts in
welfare spending in order to cope with the high costs caused by the need to care for the elderly does
not usually include any allusion to the possibility that such an expectation is unlikely (Gee. 2002).
Why? Because these cuts fit perfectly with a neoliberal vision of the welfare organization, at whose
service part of the demography has been placed. In this context, dissenting voices have appeared.
For example. Mullan (2000) has defended that the problematization of aging, as if it were an
imaginary "time bomb, is nothing but a specific case of a phenomenon that he places at the
beginning of the 1990s: the naturalization of political discussions." - economic ethics through the use
of demographic factors on the structure of the population considered as natural phenomena and,
therefore, inevitable.The demographic aging of the population is not a prediction but a reality -it is
defended from the naturalizing position, the The fuse has already been lit and the budgetary
consequences are inevitably upon us. Faced with statements like this, Mullan (2000) took a clearly
distant position: "The growing concern about aging has nothing to do with the impact directly from
demographic changes. The new prominence of demographic aging discovered a couple of decades
ago is the scapegoat for changes in society and the economy that have no demographic causes... the
obsession around aging that has grown beyond the traditional discourse of The economy is not due
to demographic changes either" (p. 6).ntervention in the form of policies and programs. In fact,
Mullan (2000) spoke of not one but two time bombs. The first, created by some politicians and
agents of public opinion in the 1980s, used aging as a threat to justify the diminishing economic role
of states and the need to reform welfare systems. The second, launched especially in the following
decade, meant a change of focus from economic policy arguments to a question of anxiety and
feelings, of insecurity and fear, of the generalized perception of being in danger -one more of the
dangers referred to in chapter 11 in this same volume. Nothing better than the metaphor of the time
bomb to represent the idea of a threat with enormous consequences and with the countdown
running- Of course, the part of the metaphor that would have led to talk about the possibilities of
deactivating the bomb has gone unnoticed; At most, what is being discussed is what to do after the
outbreak.

Every atom of my body

Is screaming your name

I run away from everything

That might be a reminder of your existence

Reminder that once

I knew every part of you

The way you breathe

The way you walk

What you wear

And how you talk

The way you loved me

Yesterday

And yesterday was six years ago

And the hardest part

Of them all

Of you not being the part of my stories

The part where days go by and I did not tell you good news

Or bad ones

The part where you did not see how much change there was

Who I am know
What makes me happy and entwined

With who I spend my day

And how they pass by

Without you.

The hardest ones

Of them all

Is the one where I am alone

Because I don’t want to touch another body

If it is not yours

So I have to tell myself

All over again

That this too

Shall pass.

I don’t know your bones anymore.