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An Inquiry Into The Effect Of Organisational And Personal Adaptation To Older ...

Chapter 1 Introduction

The question of the older individual at work starts with what the United Kingdom says about the subject as the position of the country represents the consensus of the mood of the nation. The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI, 2005) under the document ‘Statutory Instrument 2006 No, 1031, The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006' specifically states that discrimination of any form with respect to age in terms of:

Less Favorable Treatment,
Victimization,
Instructions to Discriminate,
Harassment,
Application for Employment and or Vocational Training,

The implications of this legislation are best summed up by the following statement (Peterson, 2002):
"The world stands on the threshold of a social transformation--even a revolution--with few parallels in humanity's past.... Perhaps two-thirds of all people who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today."

The preceding becomes more meaningful when put into historical perspective. For nearly all of history, the elderly (people age 65 and over) never amounted to more than 2 or 3 percent of the population (UN Population Division, 2001). Roughly 150 years ago, that share started to rise. Today, in the developed world, it amounts to 15 percent. By the year 2030, the UN projects that it will be nearing 25 percent and may be hitting 30 percent in Japan and some of the fast aging countries of continental Europe (UN Population Division, 2001). It is projected that in approximately fifty years that the population composition in some developed countries may achieve a median age of fifty five, and that in just twenty years almost one-third of the population of the European Union, 113 million, will have reached the age of pensioners (World Health Organization, 1993). The composition of economies are starting to undergo a shift unprecedented in history. In equating future economic, environmental as well as social change, demographic factors represent important components within these equations relative to the causes as well as effects. The foregoing takes into account material utilization factors that differ for income as well as age groups on the type and amount of resource used (Ahlburg and Land, 1992, pp. 289-299).

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