“I think I'm better at it myself”: the Capability Approach and Being Independent in Later Life.

Louise Meijering,Sepideh Yousefzadeh,Bettina Van Hoven

doi:10.17583/rasp.2019.3678

Abstract

Current policies on ageing in the global north emphasize that ‘ageing well’ is an individual responsibility, and tend to undervalue the social, economic and cultural context of ageing. The capability approach is well-suited to address the interplay between context and individual in later life. In this article, we therefore use the capability approach to explore how individual capabilities and contextual opportunities and restrictions contribute to being independent in later life. A qualitative methodology was adopted and we conducted in-depth interviews with 32 adults aged 65 and older, who lived independently and in sheltered housing. The study was carried out in two urban neighborhoods in the North of the Netherlands. Our findings underline that different pathways to independence are shaped by individual resources and capabilities, as well as by social and physical characteristics of the living environment. The three key capabilities that lead to being independent that we found were 1) to be comfortable at home and in the neighborhood; 2) to enjoy fulfilling social relations, and 3) to be mobile. The generated insights could be linked to policy initiatives with regard to age-friendly environments.

Highlights

In this article, we use the capability approach to explore how individual capabilities and contextual opportunities and restrictions contribute to being independent in later life
In neighborhood 2 in particular, there was a large group of older adults who had lived there for a long time, sometimes since its construction in the 1960s: Interviewer: You want to stay in [neighborhood 2]? Mr Aalders: Yes
We focused on evaluating independence as a particular achievement, rather than on wellbeing as a general functioning, which is often done in studies that use the capability approach in later life (e.g. Antczak & Zaidi, 2018; van Ootegem & Spillemaeckers, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

We use the capability approach to explore how individual capabilities and contextual opportunities and restrictions contribute to being independent in later life. A s a response to ageing societies, policies in the global northwest have begun to target societal concerns around ageing through healthy ageing policy frameworks Often these take shape in policies that stimulate ageing-in-place which emphasize that growing old in one’s own home and neighborhood is in the best interest of older adults. As a result of these dominant normative discourses, little room remains for narratives that foreground ageing successfully with disability or illness, or ageing not as loss but as affording new freedoms and new relationships. These opportunities may arise as older adults manage to reconstruct their identities based on the structural conditions in which they find themselves (e.g. retirement, welfare institutions). Research needs to be done on how older adults can live a meaningful life in the context of the impairments they experience

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