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

退休的过程在时间和资源方面变得越来越复杂和分化。许多社会的“积极老龄化”政策现在鼓励老年工人工作到退休年龄或超过退休年龄。然而，这样做的理由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。教育水平在退休过程中也很重要，因为不同的教育群体对晚年投资的信息、资源和态度都不同。例如，受过良好教育的人更有可能在有足够收入和资产的计划基础上退休。另一个影响退休的关键因素是家庭财富的重要性，尤其是房屋所有权，这在现有的研究中是缺失的。房屋所有权作为一种资产基础，已被认为是建立社会和金融资本以及获得日益私有化的老年福利的关键。虽然在拥有住房的社会中，住房财富是大多数家庭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，情况未必如此。在许多社会中，年轻人拥有住房的机会减少了，这意味着未来几代人预计将工作更长时间。因此，该项目将超越收入和正式退休年龄等传统指标，分析晚年的社会不平等。相反，它将探索和确定日本和英国日益老龄化的婴儿潮一代的住房财富、教育水平和延长的工作寿命之间的关系。跨国分析是该项目的重要组成部分，因为各国之间延长工作时间的机会和制约因素差别很大。为了理解退休不平等，我们需要更深入地了解制度制度（如退休年龄、社会保障、雇主的态度）和个人人力资本（如技能、资格）如何共同影响老年人的退休过程。比较日本和英国的基本原理是：它们都是拥有住房的社会，但房价升值（英国）和贬值（日本）的差异很大；在这两个社会中，退休储蓄在很大程度上是私有化的，国家和雇主鼓励老年人工作更长时间，并给予奖励和制裁。“连结”计划的主要目的，是汇聚社会政策、经济、管理及房屋研究等不同学科背景的学者，加深对不同福利制度下财富、教育、工作及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途径，也是与非学术利益相关者交流知识的途径。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支持老年人。该项目的初步研究结果将通过项目网页、博客文章、学术文章和政策简报（包括雇主的良好做法）发布。该项目将有助于重塑围绕延长工作寿命的政策辩论，并探索退休计划的早期干预措施。这是一项新的合作，项目团队成员具有互补的研究技能和专业知识，以及在比较分析方面的良好记录。

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.