Developing A Model of Mobility Capital for An Ageing Population

Charles Musselwhite and Theresa Scott
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Charles Musselwhite: Centre for Innovative Ageing, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
Theresa Scott: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: Driving a car meets older people’s needs, providing utility (getting from A to B), psychosocial (providing identity and roles and feelings of independence and normality) and aesthetic (mobility for its own sake) mobilities. Giving up driving is related to poorer health and wellbeing. This paper addresses how older people cope when they give up driving, using Bourdieu’s theory of capital as a way of categorising different barriers and enablers to managing without a car in a hypermobile society. Older people are most likely to mention barriers and enablers to mobility relating to infrastructure capital (technology, services, roads, pavements, finance and economics), followed by social capital (friends, family, neighbourhood and community). Cultural capital (norms, expectations, rules, laws) and individual capital (skills, abilities, resilience, adaptation and desire and willingness to change) are less important but still significantly contribute to older people’s mobility. Implications for policy and practice suggest that provision for older people beyond the car must explore capital across all four of the domains.

Keywords: ageing; older people; later life; mobilities; social capital; cultural capital; transport; giving up driving, driving cessation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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