SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ELDERLY QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE CONTEXT OF ACTIVE AGEING DEBATES. CASE STUDY: IAȘI COUNTY

Auteurs

  • Alexandru-Cosmin APOSTOL PhD, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Carol I 11, 700506, Iași, Romania

Mots-clés :

elderly, ageing, active ageing, social participation, quality of life

Résumé

Nowadays, population ageing has become a global phenomenon and Romania is also facing it. In this context, international organizations, such as United Nations or World Health Organization, are paying more attention to public policies that support an increased social participation among the elderly, taking as premise that engaging in various activities could improve third age people`s quality of life. Starting from defining a series of concepts such as active ageing, social participation or quality of life, I made a brief secondary statis-tical analysis, from a demographic perspective, based on Eurostat projections regarding the evolution of Romanian population. Furthermore, I presented some of the results of an empirical approach conducted in Iași County, in 2015, on a sample of 710 people, over 65 years. The sociological study was funded by EEA Grants 2009-2014, the NGO Fund in Romania, as part of the project “Elderly home care”, implemented by St. Damian Associa-tion, Iași City. The aim of the research was to identify the main social needs and issues experienced by the elderly. Thus, the main problems identified are related to health status, poor financial situation and the presence of strong loneliness and social useless feelings.

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