Richard Smith
It is commonplace to assume that, traditionally, care for older adults has been the responsibility of family members, and was provided within the extended family – implying that elderly persons spent their declining years under the same roof as their married children. But work at Campop has shown that this residential arrangement was not actually the norm in the British past.
Richard Smith
Today those aged 60 and over make up slightly more than 1 in 5 of the UK population. It is tempting to believe that in the distant past, because there were fewer older people, they enjoyed a greater cachet. But how far is this view born out in the English case by the findings of historical demography? Is it correct to regard age structures over the deeper past as unvarying through time?
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