Feature

Being old in the global village

Globalisation threatens the health of older people, eroding traditional systems of support, explains Gail Wilson

In later life the saying ‘no man is an island’ becomes truer than ever. Older men and women rely on collective support and this can be divided into three overlapping systems. The first is economic, broadly interpreted to include paid and unpaid work. Wherever pensions are low, restricted to civil servants and the military, or non-existent, work is the main means of support in later life.

Some elders, usually men, are able to continue in paid jobs, especially if they can shift to easier work, but most are likely to be doing unpaid work such as farming, childcare or housework – often filling in for family members who work in the formal economy.

The second collective support for older people is the family. It operates as a workplace, a source of food, shelter and emotional support and, in the last resort, as a care provider.

Those who have no family and cannot work must rely wholly on the third system, formal collectives – charities and different versions of the welfare state. Welfare in the form of pensions and free healthcare has transformed old age in richer OECD countries and charities ward off destitution for some, but they are not a real safety net.

Each of these three systems is being put at risk by globalisation. The free market capitalism that has accompanied economic globalisation has made rich countries much richer while poor countries have stayed the same or fallen back.

The structural adjustment policies (SAPs) imposed on countries in economic difficulties by the International Monetary Fund and, to a lesser degree, the World Bank, have made these countries subject to the whims of multinational capital, cut protection for home industries, increased pollution, threatened health and education and imposed public expenditure cuts. The collapse of local industries, disruption of agriculture, over-rapid urbanisation and growing urban poverty frequently follow.

In these circumstances the work opportunities for older men and women change. They may be left behind in rural areas to farm land that is beyond their strength, or reduced to begging in cities.

Family support systems are put under increasing strain as fewer members can find paid work. Economic migrants, and refugees from the world’s localised wars, are moving between countries in ever-growing numbers, further disrupting families. Migration does, however, open up opportunities for a few lucky migrants, young and old.

Charges for health and education mean that families must prioritise, and health care for older people becomes a luxury few can afford. In better off countries there is pressure to privatise pensions and cut welfare payouts.

As the logic of global financial markets comes to dominate policy at home and abroad, social considerations can appear increasingly irrelevant. Companies compete to add value for their shareholders by rationalising production and driving out competition. The results can range from the potential collapse of island economies based on smallholder co-operatives, for example in the West Indies if EU banana tariffs that work in their favour are abolished, to the loss of thousands of jobs in Vilvoorde in Belgium, and Longbridge and Dagenham in the UK, as industrial production is rationalised to the cheapest sites.

Since 1995 the World Trade Organisation has managed to build up an impressive body of international law to enforce ‘free’ markets – markets rigged in favour of the rich.

The questions for older men and women everywhere is how well work, family and welfare systems are developed, and how they interact with each other in the context of globalisation. We can divide the answer into material and ideological effects, but the one affects the other.

Most obviously, as pointed out above, SAPs, growing urbanisation and the collapse of traditional industry and agriculture result in the disruption of economic systems that give older people paid or unpaid work. The accompanying poverty affects very large percentages of the population in developing countries.

Formal collectives such as pensions systems and free health care are threatened and even dismantled as countries are forced to reduce public expenditure in order to meet internationally imposed financial targets. Privatised pensions mean the poor cannot contribute and end up poorer still in old age. The collective activity of charities cannot replace sound national policies.

In ideological terms, the rise of individualism that has accompanied the triumph of market capitalism puts all those whose individual market power is below average at risk. Older people rely more on collective support than any other group except young children, and so are most at risk from the rise of individualistic ideologies.

The hegemony of free market thinking refuses to count unpaid work as work, sets generation against generation through spurious calculations of intergenerational inequity, and sees pensions as a tax on the current labour force, not as earnings forgone over the life course.

But none of these effects of globalisation is inevitable. Countries such as Denmark, and even very poor states like Kerala in India, have shown that social welfare is possible in a globalising world. And free market doctrines do have their detractors. Providing a safety net for SAPs casualties is becoming popular in the IMF and World Bank (though not yet explicitly to help older people).

The problem remains that safety nets are no substitute for sustainable social and human development and until social solidarity is seen as more important than market freedom, globalisation will continue to be a threat to all who are old and poor.