My Home Is My Castle-Housing in Old Age

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During the course of the latter decades of the twentieth century, housing in old age became a central issue in discussions relating to the preparation for retirement as the growing cohorts of older people across Europe retired earlier and could look forward to increasing years in retirement, often in housing, which had been ideal for parents and children, but which would become increasingly cumbersome, particularly for the partner destined to survive into advanced old age. Towards the end of the 1970s, in response to a rapidly ageing population, the Danish Government established the world's first Commission on Ageing to develop a coherent, joined-up policy for older people, and housing was a key issue in the work of that Commission. Interest in these issues has not abated in the subsequent decades and at the turn of the twenty-first century there is still widespread research, and policy development in the field. In Denmark, where attractive, supported housing for older people has been a key element in housing policy development, both younger and older generations display a solid lack of propensity to move to housing, which would be more suitable in old age. Since 1987, the Danish Longitudinal Future Study (DLFS) has followed in three waves four generations originally aged 40–64 years, analysing and elucidating among other things their attitudes and expectations to housing in general, and to housing in old age. This paper presents the results of the study relating to the four generations of the study and considers the policy implications of the results.