The “Seven Ages”: A Framework for Social and Policy Issues

Our project’s primary purpose is to simulate societal change in New Zealand from 1981. And we do this from a “bottom-up” perspective, working from a focus on the behaviour and actions of a multiplicity of individuals to help understand aggregate patterns of social and demographic change. However, while our analysis is anchored in the dynamic behaviour of individuals, we view these actions in the context of the life course. To an important extent, much about the actions of individuals needs to be understood within the social context of key life stages through which people pass. This provides a certain structure and purpose to their lives. It also, from an analytical perspective, highlights salient social and policy issues that all societies need to deal with – such as educating the young, encouraging employment, averting severe deprivation among families in the middle years, supporting the elderly in retirement, and so on. For SociaLab this provides a useful framework for addressing salient social and policy issues through life. We take liberties with Shakespeare’s seven “ages of man” to inform this framework.