CROSS NATIONAL RESEARCH ON THE AGED AND PENSION POLICY

本项目建议考察政治参与或 先进工业民主国家的老年人投票率 从1950年到1980年。它通过分析多达70个选举年来做到这一点， 投票，以及在18个国家进行的民意调查，因此 利用了一个很少研究的微观级别数据的宝贵来源 年迈的研究人员。与老年政治活动的措施 从个人计算多个国家/地区和时间点 数据，然后该项目将与老年人的投票投票率有关 相同国家的养老金和社会福利支出。这 将焦点从个人行为转移到宏观的社会和 个人行为的政治后果。 这些努力的长期目标是了解 影响老年人地位的现代民主制度。作为 老年人越来越依赖公共交通，他们的 影响公共政策的能力对他们的地位至关重要。 大多数理论认为老年人或老年人的政治效果很小 他们影响政策的能力。然而，其他理论认为 老年人在政治上的影响力越来越大 竞技场，他们的政治活动增加了公共养老金 花销。因此，以前的争论集中在结构性问题上。 福利国家政策的决定因素与老年人的地位 而后一种观点考虑的是政治决定因素。 这里提出的研究将对这些理论进行评估， 有助于理解公共政策的性质和原因， 并找出高龄老年人地位背后的力量 工业民主国家。 该项目的方法步骤包括：1) 获取每项年龄调查的表格，不论是否 受访者在上次选举中投票，并按政党选择投票 那些投票的人；2)为每个人计算类似的表格 对调查对象的性别和教育构成进行对照的调查 老年和非老年人口；3)使用表格计算 老年人相对于非老年人投票倾向的衡量标准， 和选民投票率的老龄化比例；4)描述跨国 和老年人政治参与的纵向模式；5) 检验以下指标之间的统计关系 老年人参与与公共养老金支出措施 努力。

This project proposes to examine the political participation or voting turnout of the aged in the advanced industrial democracies from 1950 to 1980. It does so by analyzing up to 70 election year, voting, and public opinion surveys done in 18 nations, and thereby exploits a valuable source of microlevel data seldom studied by aging researchers. With measures of aged political activity computed for multiple nations and time points from the individual data, the project will then relate to the voting turnout of the aged to pension and social welfare spending in the same nations. This shifts the focus from individual behavior to the macro-social and political outcomes of individual behavior. The long-term goal of such efforts is to understand the forces in modern democracies that affect the status of the aged. As the aged come to depend more and more on public transfers, their ability to influence public policy becomes crucial for their status. Most theories attribute little political efficacy to the aged or to their ability to influence policy. Other theories, however, argue that the aged have become increasingly influential in the political arena, and that their political activity increases public pension spending. The former arguments thus concentrate on structural determinants of welfare state policy and the status of the aged while the latter arguments consider the political determinants. The research proposed here will evaluate these theories, contribute to understanding nature and causes of public policy, and identify the forces behind the status of the aged in advanced industrial democracies. The methodological steps in the project include the following: 1) obtaining tabulations for each survey of age by whether or not respondents voted in the last election and by party choice for those who did vote; 2) computing similar tabulations for each survey with controls for the sex and education composition of the aged and nonaged populations; 3) using the tabulations to compute measures of the aged propensity to vote relative to the nonaged, and the aged share of voter turnout; 4) describing cross-national and longitudinal patterns of aged political participation; and 5) examining the statistical relationship between measures of participation of the aged and measures of public pension spending effort.