Class and Health Inequalities in Later Life

For over sixty years significant research activity has addressed the extent to which the effects of social class over the life-course have determined or contributed to an individual’s economic and social fate in old age. This has led to the elaboration and discussion of a whole host of conceptual and measurement issues among a growing body of epidemiological and social researchers.  To these we must add, in light of the social changes and accompanying theoretical developments over the same period, questions about the viability of class as a means of understanding social relations and social inequality in contemporary society.  This paper will interrogate these issues as they relate to the role of class in later life using the prism of health inequalities. The paper argues that the wider implications of the emergence of a relatively lengthy post-working life have not been fully incorporated into studies of class and health in old age. This is a major lacuna given that the generations entering retirement today in affluent countries are precisely those who have experienced the social changes that have seen both increased prosperity and the questioning of the salience of class in wider society. We therefore need to address two questions. Firstly, how best to describe and explain patterns of social class inequalities in health over the life course? Secondly, what does class mean in later life and how can it be conceptualised in relation to a population that may have been out of the workforce for many decades?