The stereotype which depicts older people as “frail, helpless or incompetent” is also damaging, the committee found, and adds that the previous government failed to adequately address digital exclusion amongst older people as services like banking increasingly moved online.
The Committee notes that many older people are depicted as “living comfortable lives in homes they own while younger generations struggle on low incomes, unable to afford to enter the housing market and struggling with high rents.”.
There are around 1.9 million pensioners living in poverty in the UK, a recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found – around 14 per cent of all pensioners.
Depictions of older people as hoarding wealth and working against the young are “ageist stereotypes” a cross-party group of MPs has said.
Committee chairwoman Sarah Owen, Labour MP for Luton North, commented that greater enforcement is needed to combat the UK's "pervasively ageist culture.".
