Social differentiation in later life: Exploring the interaction between wealth, education and retirement trajectories in Japan and the UK

退休的过程正变得更加复杂，在时机和资源方面也变得更加差异化。许多社会的“积极老龄化”政策现在鼓励老年工作者工作到退休年龄或退休年龄以后。然而，这样做的原因和机会在很大程度上取决于个人因素，如技能、收入和健康状况。在退休过程中，教育水平也很重要，因为不同的教育群体对未来生活的投资有不同的信息、资源和态度。例如，受过更好教育的人更有可能在有计划的基础上退休，拥有足够的收入和资产。影响退休的另一个关键因素是家庭财富的重要性，尤其是拥有住房的重要性，这一点在现有研究中是没有的。拥有住房作为一种资产基础，已被认为是建立社会和金融资本以及在老年时获得日益私有化的福利的关键。虽然住房财富是拥有住房的社会中大多数家庭的个人财富的主要组成部分，但在个人储蓄率高和/或遭受房价贬值的社会中，情况并不一定如此。在许多社会的年轻群体中，拥有住房的机会有所减少，这意味着预计后代将工作更长时间。因此，该项目将超越收入和正式退休年龄的传统指标，分析晚年的社会不平等。取而代之的是，它将探索和确定日本和英国婴儿潮一代老龄化的住房财富、教育水平和延长工作寿命之间的关系。跨国分析是该项目的重要组成部分，因为不同国家之间延长工作时间的机会和限制因素差别很大。为了理解退休方面的不平等，我们需要更深入地了解机构制度(例如退休年龄、社会保障、雇主的态度)和个人人力资本(例如技能、资历)如何共同影响老年人的退休过程。比较日本和英国的理由是：它们都是拥有住房的社会，但房价升值(英国)和贬值(日本)截然不同；在两个社会，为退休而储蓄在很大程度上是私有化的，国家和雇主通过激励和制裁鼓励老年人工作更长时间。这一项目的主要目标是将具有不同学科背景的社会政策、经济学、管理学和住房研究的学者聚集在一起，发展对不同福利体系中财富、教育、工作和退休之间关系的认识和理解。计划在日本和英国举办一系列研讨会，为项目成员提供交流思想、分析比较数据和确定方法挑战的平台。研讨会不仅是学术讨论的渠道，也是与非学术利益攸关方交流知识的途径。它旨在提供信息、分析和见解，帮助政策制定者、工会、雇主和其他组织在财务和晚年职业规划方面为老年人提供支持。项目的初步结果将通过项目网页、博客文章、学术文章/S和包括雇主良好做法的政策简报来传播。该项目将有助于重新制定围绕延长工作年限的政策辩论，并探索退休规划的早期干预措施。这是一种新的合作，项目团队成员拥有互补的研究技能和专业知识，以及强大的比较分析记录。

The process of retirement is becoming more complex and differentiated in terms of timing and resources. 'Active Ageing' policies in many societies now encourage older workers to work up to and beyond retirement age. However, the reasons and opportunities to do so depend greatly on individual factors such as skills, incomes and health status. The level of education also matters in retirement process since different educational groups have different information, resources and attitudes toward investment for later life. Better educated people are for example more likely to retire on a planned basis with sufficient income and assets. Another key influence on retirement, which is absent from existing research, is the importance of household wealth - home ownership, in particular. Home ownership as an asset-base has been recognised as a key to build social and financial capital and to access increasingly privatised welfare in old age. While housing wealth is the primary component of personal wealth for the majority of households in home-owning societies, this is however not necessarily the case in societies with high rates of personal savings and/or suffering from housing price depreciation. Access to home ownership has declined among younger cohorts in many societies which means future generations are expected to work longer.This project will therefore go beyond the conventional indicators of income and formal retirement age to analyse social inequalities in later life. Instead, it will explore and identify the relationship between housing wealth, the level of education, and extended working life of ageing baby-boomers in Japan and the UK. The cross-national analysis is a vital part of the project since opportunities and constraints to work longer vary significantly between countries. In order to understand inequalities at retirement, we need to gain more insight into how institutional systems (e.g. retirement age, social security, attitudes of employers) and individual human capital (e.g. skills, qualifications) together influence retirement processes of older people. The rationales to compare Japan and the UK are: they are both home-owning societies but with contrasting housing price appreciation (UK) and depreciation (Japan); in both societies, saving towards retirement is largely privatised, and the state and employers are encouraging older people to work longer with incentives and sanctions.The main objective of this Connection project is to bring together scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds of Social Policy, Economics, Management and Housing Studies to develop the knowledge and understanding of the relationships between wealth, education, work and retirement in different welfare systems. A series of workshops are planned in Japan and the UK to provide a platform for the project members to exchange ideas, analyse comparative data, and identify methodological challenges. The workshops are not only an avenue for scholarly discussion, but also for knowledge exchange with non-academic stakeholders. It aims to provide information, analysis and insight to help policy makers, unions, employers and other organisations in supporting older people in financial and later-life career planning. The preliminary findings of the project will be disseminated using a project webpage, blog posts, academic article/s and a policy briefing including employers good practice. The project will contribute to reframing policy debate surrounding extended working life and explore early interventions in retirement planning. This is a new collaboration and the project team members have complementary research skills and expertise as well as a strong track record of comparative analysis.