Improve Resilience to Manage an Ageing Europe

ARNSTEIN AASSVE HEADS A PROJECT THAT WILL TRANSFORM THE WAY EUROPEAN POLICIES FOR AN AGEING SOCIETY ARE DEVISED

Ageing populations pose a major challenge to Western countries. Not just because as people get older they need structures that care for them, but also because they are getting older in an increasingly unpredictable world. The answer to this huge problem is designing policies that can help make people more resilient as they get older. This is the subject of a €3.1m project, called Towards a Resilient Future of Europe or, in short, FutuRes, financed by the EU within the Horizon program. Bocconi’s Arnstein Aassve of the Department of Social and Political Sciences is the Project Manager, overseeing a team with participants from seven other institutions across Europe with the aim of establishing an interdisciplinary laboratory that can provide insight and solutions.
 
The past two decades have been littered with severe crises, from the financial crisis of 2007-2008 to the global pandemic and the war in Europe, passing through a migration crisis and so on. As a consequence of this escalating uncertainty, the ability to adapt to shocks is fast becoming a crucial element of any long-term policy. And nothing fits this definition better than managing demographic trends.
 
The basic assumption underlying the FutuRes project is that ageing must be considered as a lifelong process. The condition of people at an old age, that is, reflect at least in part their choices made when they were younger. This calls for a change in the way policies are designed: instead of thinking exclusively about ageing, be it about pensions or health care, all future policies must now adopt a life-course perspective. But after this principle has been set, policies also need to take into account the impact of as yet unforeseen shocks, and must be geared towards strengthening people’s resilience, at any age.
 
FutuRes will therefore establish a laboratory where scientists belonging to a wide range of disciplines will work together to study ageing in Europe and devise evidence-based foundations for future policies, at all levels from general to practical. Indeed, as Arnstein Aassve puts it, “the mission of FutuRes is to develop the concept of a resilient life course as a means to design resilience-enhancing policies for an ageing Europe. With a clear science-to-policy approach, the project will implement an interactive and participatory policy lab where scientists, policymakers and stakeholders engage, exchange and build a resilient Europe together.”
 

by Andrea Costa