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

我打算研究政治经济学中的老龄化和老年歧视问题。年龄歧视与性别歧视、种族歧视一样，是随着资本主义经济的发展而形成的，而资本主义经济是建立在效率和自由放任的市场体制等基本原则之上的。自19世纪末以来，在西方的民族国家中，老年人、妇女和残疾人一直被视为“弱者”。他们得到了一些福利，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。自20世纪末以来，世界人口，特别是包括日本在内的发达国家的人口正在趋于老龄化。这些国家的许多决策者和经济学家对人口老龄化的前景持悲观态度。这就是逆背景的图像对年龄的影响，由负向正。老年人曾经被认为是弱者的负面形象。美国老年学家罗伯特·巴特勒说，由于这是“衰老的神话”，基于工作的人权，必须将其逆转为积极的老龄化，特别是生产性老龄化。在我们的研究项目组对岛根县广濑町和福山镇的老年人进行的研究中，我们得到了一个非常有趣的结论，广濑町的老年人在日常生活中比福山市的城市老年人更有生产力老龄化的观念。

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.