Ageing Populations in Post-Industrial Democracies: Comparative Studies of Policies and Politics

Most advanced democracies are currently experiencing accelerated population ageing, which fundamentally changes not just their demographic composition; it can also be expected to have far-reaching political and policy consequences.

This volume brings together an expert set of scholars from Europe and North America to investigate generational politics and public policies within an approach explicitly focusing on comparative political science. This theoretically unified text examines changing electoral policy demands due to demographic ageing, and features analysis of USA, UK, Japan, Germany, Italy and all major EU countries.

As the first sustained political science analysis of population ageing, this monograph examines both sides of the debate. It examines the actions of the state against the interests of a growing elderly voting bloc to safeguard fiscal viability, and looks at highly-topical responses such as pension cuts and increasing retirement age. It also examines the rise of ‘grey parties’, and asks what, if anything, makes such pensioner parties persist over time, in the first ever analysis of the emergence of pensioner parties in Europe.

Ageing Populations in Post-Industrial Democracies will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, and to those studying electoral and social policy reform.

Official publication date 1st January 2012.

Pieter Vanhuysse is Professor of Comparative Welfare State Research, University of Southern Denmark.

Achim Goerres is Professor of Empirical Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen.