Abstract
Active ageing (AA) policies aim to improve quality of life of older people by enabling better social participation and inclusion. Despite many international initiatives to promote AA undertaken in recent years, Italy did not systematically address this policy challenge until very recently. This paper presents the first national Plan-of-Action (PoA) (2019–2022) adopted by this country for supporting policy design and recommendation in this field. The PoA aims to create a multilevel, co-managed coordination of AA policies, by involving a network of national and regional policy makers, experts, researchers and stakeholders in civil society. The ad-hoc consultation process established for this purpose helps the recognition of different interests and expectations on AA, fostering new solutions by involvement, consultation and joint discussion of policy options. The PoA is designed to cover the traditional policy cycle, including the stages of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation and monitoring. At the end of the period covered by the PoA, an Italian AA Strategy will be launched to achieve systematic impact in this field, thus ensuring a long-term, sustainable impact on national and regional policy makers, civil society and research community.
Highlights
Population ageing is a longstanding process transforming the demographic, social and economic facets of societies worldwide, especially in the European Union (EU) [1,2] where the old-age dependency ratio reached 31.8 in 2019 against 24.9 in the United States [3]
The EU acknowledged that the aim of an active ageing (AA) policy approach is to boost the potential of older people, by optimizing opportunities for physical, social and
The Italian policy framework suffers from lack of recognition of older individuals’ actual or potential active role for formal and informal activities; disinterest in addressing new ways of engagement, including leisure, consumption and personal empowerment, considering expectations and motivations of older people; neglect of the life-course approach and the importance of supporting AA across all life stages
Summary
Population ageing is a longstanding process transforming the demographic, social and economic facets of societies worldwide, especially in the European Union (EU) [1,2] where the old-age dependency ratio reached 31.8 in 2019 against 24.9 in the United States [3]. At the European level, the concept of active ageing (AA) has been used in the last decades by policy makers, intergovernmental organizations and the research community for defining and promoting new perspectives on ageing individuals and later life, rejecting the idea of considering older people as just care receivers or passive citizens [5,6,7,8]. 12), “Active ageing is the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security to enhance quality of life as people age”. The EU acknowledged that the aim of an AA policy approach is to boost the potential of older people, by optimizing opportunities for physical, social and
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