What we owe older people: who should provide care and how much care should they provide

这项研究旨在批判性地解决两个规范性问题，这两个问题随着老龄人口（特别是80岁以上人口）的增加而在世界各国变得越来越紧迫：1。当这一年龄组的人需要照顾时，提供这种照顾的要求应该落在哪里（个人、家庭或国家），以及2.提供这种照顾的要求应如何与现有的照顾义务相平衡？该项目旨在建立一个研究这些问题的研究人员网络。因为它们本质上是规范性问题--借鉴了责任、义务和正义的思想--网络的核心是由哲学家组成的。然而，如果研究是为了解决世界上人们的真实的生活状况，就不能仅仅在理论层面上解决这些问题，而需要了解老年人护理的现实情况。因此，该项目将使那些从事规范理论工作的人与那些处理老年人护理现实的人（包括历史学家，老年学家和老年人本身）进行对话。同样，该项目所解决的问题也不仅仅是英国所面临的问题--世界各国类似的人口变化意味着研究人员正在不同的地方研究这些问题。为了借鉴这些植根于不同知识传统的不同研究人员的工作，该项目旨在将来自英国和西欧的研究人员与来自远东的研究人员聚集在一起。该项目将推动关于照顾老年人的资源分配以及个人、家庭和国家对老年人的义务的学术辩论。其目的是，这项工作还将为目前正在进行的跨国际和跨学科合作奠定基础，重点是照顾老年人的义务。

This research aims to critically address two normative questions that are becoming increasingly pressing in countries around the world as the numbers of people living into older age (in particular the numbers living beyond eighty) increase: 1. When people in this age group require care, where should the requirement to provide that care fall (on the individual, on their family, or on the State), and 2. How should the requirement to provide this care be balanced against existing obligations to care? The project aims to establish a network of researchers working on these questions. Because they are inherently normative questions - drawing on ideas of responsibility, obligation and justice - the core of the network is made up of philosophers. However, if the research is to address the real life situation of people in the world they cannot be addressed solely at a theoretical level, but need to be informed by an understanding of the realities of care for older people. As such, this project will bring those working on normative theory into conversation with those dealing with the realities of care for older people (including historians, gerontologists and older people themselves). Equally the questions the project addresses are not ones that face the UK alone - similar demographic change in countries around the world mean that researchers are working on them in a variety of different places. In order to draw on the work of these different researchers, rooted as it is in different intellectual traditions, the project aims to bring together researchers from the UK and Western Europe with researchers from the Far East. The project will further academic debates about the distribution of resources to care for older people, and the obligations that individuals, families and the State have towards them. The aim is that this work will also provide the foundation for ongoing collaboration across international and disciplinary boundaries that focuses on obligations to care for older people.