Explaining when older persons are perceived as a burden: A cross-national analysis of ageism

Abstract

This study aims to shed further light on the emergence of ageist attitudes by introducing a theoretically grounded mechanism that helps explain why older persons appear as burdensome by segments of society. We introduce the concept of “marketized mentality” (MM), which depicts a strong personal commitment to the principal values associated with the market economy, to the research on ageism. The results of multilevel regression analyses with World Values Survey data (N = 70,456 individuals in 59 nations) reveal that MM yields the hypothesized, positive relationship with our burden-focused indicator of ageism. Moreover, we observe that countries with high levels of MM—which might be conceptualized as “marketized anomic cultures”—exhibit particularly high levels of this form of ageism.