COVID-19 and the Politics of Ageing Societies: What Have We Learned?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

COVID-19 disproportionately affected older people. Part of the reason was inherent in the virus, but it was also because of the way many societies treated older people, with nursing homes often hotspots of infection. This disproportionate impact on older people also meant that the public health measures of 2020-2021 meant, in effect, that younger people were sacrificing work, education, and enjoyment in older to protect older people. Meanwhile, public health measures often condemned older people to the loss of social support networks. In few recent political debates have the implications and impact of age and ageing politics been so important- or so tangled and obscure. Early in the pandemic, there was an efflorescence of interest in the interaction between ageing, politics, and the pandemic, but since then there have been few efforts to draw lessons about the political status of older people in rich countries. We do not yet have stable answers to basic questions about what caused different approaches to managing COVID-19's impact on older people or what it tells us about the politics of ageing societies. This panel asks what we learned about the politics of ageing from COVID-19: What political power do older people have? How do we understand the impact of COVID-19 on nursing homes and eldercare facilities in different countries? Above all, what have we learned about the status of older people in politics today? The round table is made up of experts in comparative health and ageing policy, ,and will take an explicitly international and comparative perspective with a strong focus on the United States' experience. All five have published extensively on ageing, health policy, and COVID-19. The goal is to synthesise lessons from different US and international experiences and suggest directions for future research.

Sub Unit

• Division 48: Health Politics & Health Policy

Chair

• Scott L. Greer University of Michigan

Presenters

• Daniel Béland McGill University

• Katherine Cooney University of Michigan

• Michael K. Gusmano Lehigh University

• Julia Lynch University of Pennsylvania

• Charles T. McClean Yale University