This article proposes an inductive approach to the socioeconomic status of the rural elderly which, in the Zimbabwean situation, is leading to a ‘marginalisation’ model of their position. This model of marginalisation complements other perspectives on development that see rural elderly, like other rural peasants, as beneficiaries of an undifferentiated process of modernisation, in which all rural inhabitants are assumed to be disadvantaged in relation to urban groups; or it sees rural elderly as no different to other groups because of their age, but like the whole population divided into classes that become disadvantaged when they lack control of the means of production.
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