Basic Trends of Studying Aging in Global Sociology

Abstract

The given paper presents the comparative analysis of 94 reports which were announced at the XVIII World Congress of Sociology held in Yokohama, Japan in July, 2014. All reports considered the questions of aging, subjective well-being of older people, economic aspects of population aging and other questions concerning this area. The aim of the paper is to define the main tendencies in studying aging questions that interest the world sociology under the growth of life expectancy, population aging, i.e. increasing cohort of older people in relation to youth and those in midlife in the structure of population, taking into account the current economic crisis and cutting budgets income basis. The results are grouped according to the following criteria with their detailed characteristics: 1) the level of social and economic development of the societies which have become the objects of research: welfare states, developing countries and undeveloped countries; 2) the cultural peculiarities. Due to the analysis in different countries the close traditional attitude to the perceiving the aging, the intergenerational relations give more common ground to the scope of research, as for Japan and China than for Japan and the European countries in terms of the level of social welfare; 3) the scope of studies.