Aging, Inequality, and Welfare State Regimes

这是一项关于老龄化、不平等和福利国家制度的研究。该项目将使用微观层面的数据和卢森堡收入研究（LIS）的详细收入指标。该项目选择了五个高收入国家（加拿大、德国、瑞典、英国和美国），从20世纪70年代中期到1990年左右的15-20年间的数据。分析多个国家老年时期的收入变化涉及以下步骤：1)描述与退休后男性和女性相比，退休前男性和女性的收入水平和不平等的队列内变化；2)估计教育和性别（在研究的年龄范围内通常保持稳定的变量）对同一年龄组收入结果的影响变化；3)估计稳定背景变量的影响，并控制从中年到老年变化的其他变量——劳动力状况、工作时间、家庭状况和残疾——以帮助确定稳定背景变量影响变化的潜在来源；4)分别为私人和公共收入来源复制模型；5)比较五国的差异。由于群体在老年时期越来越依赖公共转移支付，对收入水平和不平等随着群体年龄增长的变化的分析可以解决三个理论问题。首先，它可以解决有关社会不平等的一个组成部分，即老年，如何重塑或未能重塑其他归因于和实现的特征（如性别和阶级）对经济结果的影响的争论。老年的弊端可能会使老年带来的性别和阶级的优势或劣势趋于平衡、加剧或维持。其次，通过考虑主要收入来源发生转变时分层过程的变化，它可以解决有关公共转移相对于市场收入的累进性、递减性或连续性的争论。第三，由于关注多个拥有不同类型公共项目和老年政策的国家，它可以解决福利国家在减少、加剧或维持老年带来的基于性别和阶级的市场不平等的能力方面的国家差异程度的争论。该分析将从绝对和相对两方面比较家庭和个人收入分配的决定因素。它将使用回归技术来分析收入差异，并将使用基于信息的不平等技术来分析相对收入份额。分析可以使用同样的技术来进一步检查不同收入来源对生命周期后期收入水平和分配变化的贡献。这些变化显示不平等程度下降、不平等程度增加或不平等程度稳定的程度，将为有关老龄化和公共收入支持对分层结构的影响的辩论提供支持。因此，该项目将在若干方面有助于理解社会分层。首先，它将老年经济福利与中年分层联系起来。随着年龄的动态变化，不平等的来源以某种方式构成了生命历程，这使得对横断面年龄组的孤立研究存在问题。其次，该项目认识到，性别不平等的结构性根源导致了男性和女性在老龄化过程中的不同经济经历，这需要单独研究。老年妇女对财务问题的脆弱性是公认的，这反映的不仅仅是个人风险；它还反映了男女面临的不同和不平等的法律、政府和体制结构。第三，该项目利用有关老龄男女经济支助制度差别很大的国家的数据，审查年龄和性别分层的结构来源。在这样做的过程中，它补充了一个庞大的比较研究传统，通常只关注阶级，而不关注性别和年龄。

This is a study of aging, inequality, and welfare state regimes. The project will use micro-level data with detailed income measures from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The project selects five high income nations (Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) with data over a 15-20 year period from the mid-1970s to about 1990. Analyzing income changes during old age for multiple nations then involves the following steps: 1) describing within-cohort changes in income levels and inequality for pre-retirement age men and women compared to post-retirement age men and women; 2) estimating the changes in the effects of education and gender -- variables that generally remain stable during the age span studied -- on income outcomes for the same age groups; 3) estimating the effects of the stable background variables with controls for additional variables that change from middle-age to old age -- labor force status, hours worked, family status, and disability -- to help identify the potential sources of changes in the effects of the stable background variables; 4) replicating the models separately for private and public income sources; and 5) comparing the differences for the five nations. Because cohorts come to depend increasingly on public transfers during old age, the analysis of changes in income levels and inequality as cohorts age can address three theoretical issues. First, it can address arguments concerning the way one component of social inequality, old age, reshapes or fails to reshape the influence on economic outcomes of other ascribed and achieved characteristics such as gender and class. Disadvantages of old age may level, heighten, or maintain the gender and class advantages or disadvantages brought into old age. Second, by considering changes in the stratification processes as a shift occurs in the primary sources of income, it can addresses debates over the progressivity, regressivity, or continuity of public transfers relative to market income. Third, with attention to multiple nations with distinct types of public programs and old age policies, it can address debates over the extent of national differences in the ability of welfare states to reduce, heighten, or maintain the gender and class-based market inequalities brought into old age. The analysis will compare the determinants of the distribution of household and personal income in both absolute and relative terms. It will use regression techniques to analyze income variance, and it will use information-based inequality techniques to analyze relative income shares. The analysis can use the same techniques to further examine the contribution of different income sources to the changes in income levels and distribution over the later stages of the life-cycle. The extent to which the changes show declining inequality, increasing inequality, or stable inequality will provide support for debates over the impact of aging and public income support on the structure of stratification. The project will thus contribute in several ways to the understanding of social stratification. First, it relates economic well-being in old age to stratification in middle age. With age viewed dynamically, sources of inequality structure the life course in ways that make the isolated study of cross-sectional age groups problematic. Second, the project recognizes that structural sources of gender inequality make for different economic experiences -- and require separate study -- of men and women during the aging process. The well-established vulnerability of older women to financial problems reflects more than individual risks; it also reflects the different and unequal legal, governmental, and institutional structures men and women face. Third, the project examines the structural sources of age and gender stratification with data on nations that have substantially different institutions of economic support for men and women in old age. In so doing, it supplements a huge comparative research tradition that often focuses on class to the exclusion of gender and age.