Gerontologists have proposed different concepts for ageing well such as 'successful ageing', 'active ageing', and 'healthy ageing'. These conceptions are primarily focused on maintaining health and preventing disease. But they also raise the questions: what is a good life in old age and how can it be achieved? While medical in origin, these concepts and strategies for ageing well also contain ethical advice for individuals and societies on how to act regarding ageing and old age. This connection between gerontology and ethics is overlooked by both schools of thought. We thus develop this research programme for a systematic geroethics in four steps. First, we analyze 'successful ageing' as put forward by Rowe and Kahn as a paradigmatic example of a gerontological conception of ageing well. Then, in a second step, we move from criticisms within gerontology to an ethical perspective; in particular, we want to clarify the problem of the claim of universal validity of conceptions of the good life. In a third constructive step, we explain how the 'capabilities approach' could be applied in this context as a normative foundation for the implicit normative assumptions of gerontological conceptions of ageing well, such as a particular choice of functionings, the ethical relevance of human agency, and the resulting claims of individuals towards society. Finally, using a concept developed by the German philosopher Ursula Wolf, we systematically develop the different aspects of the connection between ageing well and the theory of the good life in their full complexity and show their interconnectedness. K E Y W O R D Sactive ageing, capabilities approach, geroethics, gerontology, 'successful ageing', theory of the good life | I NTR OD U CTI ONGerontologists have proposed different concepts and strategies of ageing well such as 'successful ageing' 1 , 'active ageing', 2 and 'healthy ageing'. 3 These concepts and strategies for 'ageing well' are not just directed toward individuals but are also aimed at the social context of ageing and old age. They intend to help guide societies in dealing with the perceived challenges of an ageing population such as rising oldage-dependency ratios, and increasing health care and pension costs.Therefore different national and international organizations such as the European Union, 4 the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 5 and the World Health Organisation 6 often refer to these conceptions in their policy suggestions for meeting the challenges of population ageing.

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As the population of Europe grows older, one crucial issue is how the incidence and prevalence of disabilities are developing over time in the older population. In this study, we compare cohort-specific disability trajectories in old age across subsequent birth cohorts in Europe, during the period 2004–2017.We used data from seven waves of data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Mixed effects logistic regression models were used to model trajectories of accumulation of ADL limitations for subsequent birth cohorts of older women and men in different European regions. The results showed that there were sex differences in ADL and IADL limitations in all regions for most cohorts. Women reported more limitations than men, particularly in Eastern and Southern rather than Northern and Western Europe. Among men in Eastern, Northern and Western Europe, later born cohorts reported more disabilities than did earlier born birth cohorts at the same ages. Similar patterns were observed for women in Northern and Western Europe. In contrast, the risk of disabilities was lower in later born cohorts than in earlier born birth cohorts among women in Eastern Europe. Overall, results from this study suggest that disability trajectories in different cohorts of men and women were by and large similar across Europe. The trajectories varied more depending on sex, age and region than depending on cohort.

To develop effective social policies to support older people in need of long-term care and their carers, it is highly important to understand the existing context in which the respective social policy should intervene. Countries differ in how care is organized. In the field of social policy, these differences are captured with concepts such as the care regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990), which identifies different countries sharing similarities in the distribution of responsibilities between the state and other actors. The family is a particularly important actor to look at, because of the extent of care provided and the significance of the distribution of care work for social inequalities – namely, gender and socio-economic status inequality. The care regime literature uses the concept of familialism (Esping-Andersen, 1999; Saraceno and Keck, 2010) to differentiate if and how the family is seen as responsible for care when comparing different social policies. Different types of familialism describe different ways of distributing care work between the family and other actors.