Gli anziani tra bisogni di cura e invecchiamento

This article intends to specularly analyse the two aspects of ageing, seeking to maintain together, in a manner of speaking, the two sides of the same coin, discussing on the one hand the factors that determine the social demand for care, and on the other, the many factors that influence the continuation of working activity beyond the age of 65 (a fact generally referred to when active age is discussed in literature and political debate). In the first paragraph of this article we present the data relating to the ageing of Italians from 1995 to 2005, showing not only the speed and intensity of the phenomenon, but also its territorial differences. In the second paragraph, starting from the theoretical perspective of health determinants (Geddes da Filicaia M. e Maciocco G. 2007), which considers health the product of individual and environmental variables, we hypothesise that the different degrees of socio-economic development which characterises the North and South of the country (Pugliese 2006) and the territorial imbalance of the system offering socio-welfare services (Caltabiano 2004), constitute environmental variables which can cause inequalities in health in the various macro-areas of the country and hence have a bearing on a different territorial articulation of the social demand for care. In the third paragraph, given that some indicators such as the difference in the disability rates, the geographic distribution of poverty, the territorial differences in income, the socio-economic imbalance between the North and South of the country and the shortage of welfare and health care on offer in the South of Italy determine a condition of social disadvantage for the elderly of the South, we consider the possible effects of social unease on active ageing. We put forward two hypotheses: a) Social hardship negatively influences the quality of life, understood in the broad sense, as in Donati (1979) “ability to plan, self mastery, existential vitality and life opportunities”, and ends by inhibiting the capacity for self promotion on the part of the elderly, thus compromising the very possibility of living ageing in an active way. b) contrarily social hardship and economic deprivation are factors that force the eldelderly to continue working so as to meet their personal and family needs (one thinks of the curse of youth unemployment in Southern Italy). Finally in the fourth paragraph, starting from a field study carried out in a small town in Southern Italy (Vallo della Lucania) we document the experience of some women in their seventies and eighties who are experiencing their own paths of active ageing.