Active Ageing and Active Citizenship in Liguria: A Case Study

Abstract

Liguria has the oldest age structure in Europe because of a low birth rate and long lifespans and therefore is a very interesting laboratory region in which to experiment with active ageing policies. The generations that are now approaching retirement hold a high level of personal and professional resources; so the ‘new’ elderly people are reluctant to consider retirement as a definitive exit from active life, because this phase can be considered a transition to a different form of active life. The overlap of retirement and the end of activity exists only in societies based on paid work, in which a salary ‘certifies' the productivity of work (and the absence of income its unproductivity); on the contrary, in my opinion, it is the fruit of the work, not its payment, that determines its productivity, as Jean-Baptiste Say said two centuries ago. Therefore, as the experience described in this article shows, if we emphasise the production of utility as a criterion for evaluating people's activity, we find that retirement can reveal itself to be an opportunity to start or to reinforce activities that are useful to society and interesting for elderly people.