Historical Study on the Ideas of Productive Aging : Work Ethic and Aging in Political Economy in US and Britain.

我本打算研究政治经济学中的老龄化和年龄歧视问题。与性别歧视和种族主义一样，年龄歧视是随着资本主义经济的发展而形成的，资本主义经济是建立在效率和自由市场制度等基本原则基础上的。自19世纪末以来，在西方民族国家中，老年人、妇女和残疾人一直被视为“弱者”。他们获得了一些福利，如英国的老年养老金和美国的医疗保险福利。但他们一直被排除在劳动力市场之外，被边缘化。20世纪末以来，世界特别是包括日本在内的发达国家人口老龄化。这些国家的许多政策制定者和经济学家对人口老龄化持悲观看法。这就是老年人形象由消极向积极转变的背景。老年人曾经被视为虚弱的、负面的形象。美国老年学家罗伯特·巴特勒说，由于这是“老龄化神话”，因此必须逆转为积极老龄化，特别是基于工作权利的生产性老龄化。我们的研究团队对岛根县广罗斯町和福山市区的老年人进行了研究，得出了一个非常有趣的结论，即广罗斯町的老年人在日常生活中比福山的城市老年人更富有成效。

I have intended to study on ageing and ageism in political economy.1. Ageism, like sexism and racism, has been shaped with the development of capitalist economy, which is founded on the fundamental principle such as efficiency and laissez faire market system.2. The aged, as well as women and handicapped, used to be treated as 'weaker persons' in the nation states in the West since the late 19^<th> century. They got some kinds of welfare benefits such as the Old Age Pension in Britain and Medicare Benefits in US. But they have been getting excluded and marginalized from labor market.3. Since the late 20^<th> century, population in the world, especially developed countries including Japan, is getting to graying. Many policy makers and economists in those countries have dismal perspectives of getting graying population.4. This is the background of the reverse of image on the aged from negative to positive. The aged used to be counted as the Weak, negative image. As it is 'the aging myths', said Robert Butler, gerontologist of US, it must be reversed to positive aging, especially productive aging, based on the human right to work.5. On the research of the old age people in Hirose-cho in Shimane, back country area, and Fukuyama, town area by our research project team, we got a very interesting conclusions that the old people in Hirose-cho take more productive aging idea in their everyday life than citied old people in Fukuyama.