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The development of national capacity to undertake ageing‐related research is vital to ensuring that the challenges arising from an ageing society faced by government, society and individuals are adequately understood and quality of life enhanced. Yet, in the early 2000s there was a danger that previous initial investment in ageing research would be wasted. A campaign was mounted to support newcomers to ageing research, especially those in early career, eventually resulting in Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity (SPARC). This was a four‐year programme to pump‐prime newcomers to ageing research, to publicise the outcomes of ageing research to all stakeholders and to lobby policy‐makers about the value of ageing research. This end‐of‐programme review suggests that those supported with pump‐priming awards have been fast‐tracked into the highly competitive world of ageing research, that the findings have been very well received and that the advocacy activities have been influential. A new model for promoting ageing research has been established.

The ageing process is often discussed as though it is unique to humans. However, it can be observed throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. In every species in which it occurs, the ageing process has common traits. It is a progressive, intrinsic, cumulative and deleterious process that eventually gives rise to physiological frailty, morbidity and death. Historically, biogerontology had a slow start but the last 10 years have seen exceptional progress in understanding both why and how ageing changes occur. As a result of this new knowledge, interventions that could produce longer, healthier human lives are close to becoming clinical realities. Unfortunately, the speed and scale of these advances is not well understood outside the relatively small community of biological gerontologists. This article reviews some of these advances for a non‐specialist audience, speculates on their potential impact and identifies current barriers to future progress.

Increased longevity is the success story of 20th‐century biomedicine, together with improvements in general living conditions, but it brings great challenges. Although many individuals do undergo what might be termed ‘successful ageing’, this is not a universal experience, for with older age comes a range of age‐related diseases and degenerations that can diminish, if not destroy, quality of life for some older individuals. Biogerontology is the study of the biology of ageing, a normal process but one that has the potential to contribute to age‐related disease. Its goal is to extend the proportion of a life that is healthy, an outcome that is desirable both at an individual and a societal level. One of the great insights from the last decade or more of biogerontology is the realisation that the ageing process is not a fixed, unchangeable process. Rather, it is controlled by genes and is open to experimental interventions that extend healthy lifespan, in species from microbes to mice. These findings have produced a sea change in the way the biogerontological community views ageing: not as a fixed, ‘inevitable’ process, but one where rates of ageing vary enormously according to genotype, and can be readily changed by interventions. This makes the biological process of ageing an attractive target both to understand, and target, age‐related conditions.

Knowledge of why and how we age is pointing to ways to extend human longevity. Studies in model organisms indicate that increasing the expression of repair and maintenance genes results in slower ageing and increased life expectancy. It might soon be possible to achieve such slowing of ageing in humans. The evidence for, and societal consequences of, such an advance are discussed.

In this paper we present preliminary findings from a study of the social, ethical and cultural aspects of ageing science and medicine. The paper draws on a collaborative, ongoing project between life scientists and sociologists, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) New Dynamics of Ageing Programme1 and the ESRC Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics2. The sociological element of this project involves participant observation and interviews with expert scientists who specialise in ageing and age‐related diseases, both in the UK and the US, as well as interviews with sceptics of ageing science and medicine. There has been much critique of how ageing science is anti‐ageing, reinforcing the ageism prevalent in Western culture. Our specific objective in this paper is to suggest how biogerontology can contribute to the social inclusion of older people, particularly in relation to health care. We discuss how agesim is endemic to some aspects of health care, and go on to show how the ways that biogerontology is reconceptualising what it is to age, and to be old, can help reinclude ageing and the aged in health‐care education, policy and practice.

While still early in the 21st century, nations are experiencing an unprecedented rise in people living into their 80s, 90s, and even longer. Many national leaders view with alarm a possible tidal wave of chronic age‐related disease and disability. Competing scenarios predict insurmountable social and economic stress; or alternatively, a future in which older people continue to function and contribute during extended healthy years of life made possible by scientific and medical advances. The latter vision, termed the 'longevity dividend', is discussed in terms of strategies for achieving this goal.

This paper unravels the conceptual and theoretical insights of Foucault’s later work on technologies of self in order to understand Bio‐medicine which impinges on the social construction of ageing. The article attempts to show how Foucault’s theoretical insights allows scholars of sociology and social policy to provide a critical appraisal of ageing. The paper also examines the relationship between ageing and self‐care in three contextual domains: good health management; use of counselling; and bodily enhancement.

By applying a futures approach to ageing of the population, Queensland has the opportunity to plan for changing aspirations of all of society – working to achieve identified preferred outcomes for society, rather than planning for problems or just for a specific target group. Queensland 2020: A State for All Ages is a project that aims to encourage whole‐of‐government and community debate on the structural ageing of the population and the interconnected needs of all generations. It focuses on government planning frameworks and aims to generate a transformational shift in how government, business and community organisations view the ageing of the population. To focus community debate and inform government planning, the project identified four key areas and commissioned academic stimulus papers to address these issues from an intergenerational perspective. These four areas were a futures focus; an ageing perspective; a youth perspective; and a human service planning perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine the effect of population ageing on private saving, taking into account the fact that ageing is brought about by not only rising old‐aged dependency but also expanding longevity.

The study uses panel data of 22 OECD countries from 1961 to 2010. Linear and non‐linear panel regression methods are used. The study takes into account the time series characteristic of the data, such as the deterministic trend present in old‐age dependency ratio.

Longevity consistently has a significant positive impact on savings, while old‐aged dependency rate has no discernible impact once country‐specific time trends in the data are accounted for. The general finding within the literature where old‐age dependency exerts a negative impact on savings is sensitive to the manner in which the data is handled and/or the sample selected.

First, the authors jointly consider rising old‐aged dependency and expanding longevity on savings, thus avoiding potential omitted variable bias in previous studies. Second, they explore non‐linearity in the savings‐ageing relationship which was ignored previously. Third, they identify whether saving rate and demographic measures are sharing common stochastic trends or driven by individual deterministic trends to avoid spurious regression results.

This paper aims to investigate a workforce policy response to the ageing workforce, emerging social and demographic trends, ongoing and rapid change, the growth in complexity and the changing nature of work.

The main method for constructing this paper is analysis of selected texts rather than the more conventional empirical studies. The approach is that of scenario construction, guided by the criteria established by Nowotny et al. Evidence is gathered of emergent trends that affect management practices and structures now and in the foreseeable future. These trends are identified and woven into a commentary that links them in a focus on the priorities for Australian organizations.

The findings from this research suggest that “command‐based” management structures of the bureaucracy, given emergent trends, present as an impediment to organizational success. Rather, a workforce policy reform agenda for both understanding and managing noted historical conditions in a coherent way is proposed.

The conclusions of this paper are significant for large organizations faced with the dynamism of the modern era and the difficulties associated with emerging demographic and social trends. They suggest a workforce policy reform agenda for both understanding and managing these historical conditions in a coherent way.

This paper deals with a topic that is exercising policy makers in all the developed economies. It offers practical advice to assist the development of workforce policy to better manage emergent trends.