Assessment of the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes towards older people in the world

The aim of this article was to assess the scale and extent of discriminatory attitudes towards the older generation. The information basis of the research was studies of researchers in the field of sociology, demography, anthropology; data of the sixth wave of the world sociological research World Values Survey; the results of the consolidated ratings to assess the development of democratic institutions, the quality of life of older people. General scientific research methods (logical, system approaches, generalization method), statistical methods (groupings, samples, indices, correlation, pair regression equations), sociological and tabular methods of data visualization were used in the work. The first part of the article reveals the nature and essence of age discrimination in the context of cultural, economic and social changes. The second part of the article presents the results of testing the author's methodology for assessing the extent and prevalence of discriminatory attitudes towards older people in 56 countries. The integral index of tolerant attitude to the older was made, which consists of five private indicators with a marker of discriminatory attitudes: disrespectful attitude to the older; perception of the older as a burden for the state budget; perception of the older as a burden for society as a whole; perception of the older as unreliable workers; perception of the older as a social group with excessive political influence. The vertical of age discrimination in the countries of the world is built on the basis of the integral index of tolerant attitude to older people; grouping by interval values of the indicator is made. At the next stage, the links of the studied phenomenon with factor characteristics (demographic, economic, value and political) for all countries were checked. To identify the relationship between the effective (index of tolerant attitude to the older) and the factor signs, the equations of pair regression were consistently constructed, the correlation coefficient was calculated. It is revealed that countries with the lowest prevalence of age discrimination are characterized by a high average per capita income, less influence of traditions and values of religion, a much more developed system of democratic institutions, as well as not only a large proportion of older people, but also a much higher quality of their lives. The final conclusion is that the eradication of age discrimination is a phenomenon that accompanies the economic and socio-cultural modernization of the state.

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