Well-Being of Older People in Ageing Societies

Asghar Zaidi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754675969
• eBook ISBN: 9781351873284
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Lavoro in ambito sociale

Well-Being of Older People in Ageing Societies poses answers to the question of how we can measure and conceptualize the well-being of older people. It focuses on the future research agenda and policy reforms that will be necessary to maintain a decent well-being for older people, given the context of our ageing populations. This book draws on longitudinal datasets and empirical research on the multidimensional measures of older people's welfare, providing a comparative analysis of social assistance and pensions for older people in the UK and The Netherlands. This title will be essential reading to anyone with an interest in gerontology and the effect society, public policy and governance can have on the welfare of older people.

Part I:
Setting the Context

Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 Preamble

The ageing process begins at the moment of birth and ends at death. While ageing, we experience a distinctive lifecourse trajectory, and yet we can identify some common stages of life. Shakespeare, in his seven ages of man, identified life stages ranging from the 'mewling and puking' babe to a rather graphically, if negatively, portrayed 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything' old person (As You Like it, Act II). Hinduism identifies four life stages - from early age, at which to pursue chaste studentship, through to the age at which signs of ageing appear - when a man has seen the sons of his sons. Rowntree (1902) was amongst the first social scientists to formalise the concept of alternating life stages and the economic and social attributes of these stages - ranging from early childhood (where economic dependency is a given) to the time when the man is too old to work (and thus at risk of being in poverty).

So, we all begin in childhood, and face the experiences of adolescence and coming of age, and of growing old. By passing through all these different phases of life, and accumulating life experiences along the way, we end up living in old age. The focus of research undertaken in this book is the old-age phase of life, and this emphasis on the subgroup of older people is motivated by some stylised facts of our contemporary world;

• Rising longevity. It is less unusual nowadays to make it through to old age, a fact largely attributable to a combination of advances in public health (e.g. water purification and improved sanitation), medical technology (e.g. treatment of heart and lung diseases) and improving standards of living (e.g. better nutrition). This rise in human life expectancy is rated, quite justifiably, as one of the most remarkable advances of recent times. Thus, the fact that we spend an increasingly longer time of our life in older age makes it more important to gain a holistic understanding of the level of the economic and social resources available to us in old age and of the dynamics of resources during this phase of later life.
• Interlinkage with earlier phases of life: The dual systems of social insurance and social assistance in modern welfare states play an important role in determining older people's entitlements to pension rights. Individual entitlements in old age are, in general, linked with experiences during earlier phases of life, such as the labour market association, marital association with someone in the labour market, child and adult care responsibilities, and residence in the country. Thus, an evaluation of personal welfare in old age offers us insights into how differential experiences of earlier phases of life and their treatment by the welfare system impact upon resources available in old age.
• Current environment of population ageing: During the latter part of the past century, the trend in longevity has been accompanied by a drop in fertility rates, a factor attributable largely to advances in the emancipation of women. Together, these trends continue to shift the distribution of the population in most developed countries in such a way that the ratio of elderly to non-elderly people, and therefore the average age of the population, is rising. Nor are these trends likely to abate in the near future, so that societies experiencing this demographic shift - commonly referred to as ageing societies - now face new challenges, new policy directions. In this environment, a substantive research focus on older people's resources is imperative so as to design effective social and economic policies to guard against the unprecedented rise in public social expenditures and avoid the moral hazard of poverty in old age.

With these broad motivations in mind, we can now identify specific research questions addressed in the book.

1. Multidimensional perspective on older people's well-being: how is the information base on older people's personal resources enriched when economic and health well-being are measured by adopting a multidimensional perspective?
2. Income experience in old age: what is the income experience during old age, and what factors are associated with income dynamics during the ageing process in the old-age phase of life?
3. Comparative perspective on income dynamics in old age: what is the relative importance of various individual attributes and life events in determining the income experience of older people who live in different systems of social insurance and social assistance provision?

Next (in Section 1.2), we provide a description of these research questions, which define the three research themes under which empirical research pursued in this book is organised.

Before we embark on this research, a wide range of definitional, conceptual and methodological issues must also be resolved. Within the context of research on the well-being of older people in ageing societies, we need to set out:

• How do we define old age?
• What do we mean by ageing societies?
• What concepts or theoretical approaches will define our understanding of well-being?
• What empirical methods are to be adopted in measuring well-being?
• What datasets to use?
• How best to summarise results and draw out conclusions for policymakers?

In Section 1.3, we provide the most essential base definitions: the definition of older people used throughout the book and an explanation of what do we mean by 'ageing societies'. These initial definitions will become a component of the first part of this book 'Part I: Setting the Context', which sets out the broader context for all the empirical work carried out in the book and it also includes Chapters 2-4. In Chapter 2, we assess the relative strengths of various conceptual approaches to measure personal well-being of older people, and in Chapter 3 we outline specific methodology for the purpose of its empirical implementation. This information base is further strengthened by a schematic description of the British social insurance and social benefit system in Chapter 4. In the subsequent parts of the book, 'Vart II: Empirical Findings' (Chapters 5-8) performs the empirical analyses, and 'Part III: Conclusions' (Chapter 9) draws out policy-relevant conclusions and also reports on possible extensions of research performed in the book.

The remainder of this chapter is organised in five sections. Section 1.2 outlines the three themes of research pursued in this book. Section 1.3 provides the definitions of (i) older people and (ii) the ageing societies. Section 1.4 outlines the datasets used in the book, and Section 1.5 provides the overview of the whole book.

1.2 Three themes on well-being of older people

In line with the research questions outlined above, the research undertaken in this book can be broadly categorised into three different themes or perspectives on the well-being of older people:

1. Multi-dimensional analyses of older people's well-being;
2. Dynamic perspectives on economic well-being during old age; and
3. Cross-national comparisons of income dynamics during old age.

We outline the motivations behind the choice of these three themes in this chapter before addressing each theme separately in separate parts of the book.

Theme I: Multidimensional perspective on well-being

Income-based analyses of older people's economic well-being, while important, capture a partial picture of older people's welfare during old age. In old age, factors such as health, housing, and social support become ever more important in determining the personal well-being of older people, and these factors almost invariably have financial implications not captured by an analysis of income status alone. Given the fact that advancing age and physical frailty is closely associated with the onset of ill health and disability, which are both debilitating and costly, it is crucial to understand how the health status of older people relates to and impinges on their economic welfare. Multidimensional analysis sets out to capture these insights and the research reported in this book adopts the multidimensional approach by using economic well-being as the base dimension of older people's wellbeing and then extending it to well-being with respect to health. This focus on multidimensionality forms the first theme of the book.

Theme II: Income experience in old age

The economic well-being of older people has to date been most often measured by a snapshot that reports on income in a single period (see e.g. DSS 2.000; Disney and Whitehouse 2001; Zaidi et al. 2006). This practice is only revelatory of the actual circumstances of the population insofar as old age is presumed as a static phase of life, i.e. both household circumstances and income receipt remain invariable throughout old age. This belief or assumption is only justified when the majority of the population is dependent only on static sources of income and the duration of this phase of life is rather brief. However, this is increasingly no longer the typical experience for people living in developed countries; particularly in Great Britain and the Netherlands, where increasing reliance is placed on diverse sources of income¹ that may lose their value over time and also we continue to observe gains in life expectancy.

This shift in sources of income in old age, and the fact that people now spend a significantly longer time in this phase of life, makes it likely that older people observe significant changes in their income during old age. It is therefore crucial to extend analyses beyond the 'snapshot' type and provide a dynamic picture of the older people's personal welfare. We argue that the dynamic analysis of income provides a better perspective on the economic well-being of the older population and helps us identify processes that generate changes in it. This dynamic analysis of income of older people defines the second theme of the book.

Theme III: Comparative perspective on income dynamics

In developing the second theme, this study uses as its starting point the case study of Great Britain, performing empirical analyses within a specific social insurance and social benefit system. However, older people can be expected to face a different extent of income risks when they live in different institutional environments of provision of pension and social benefits. This hypothesis is tested in our work on comparison of income dynamics amongst older people in Great Britain and the Netherlands.

The comparative aspect of income experience of older people brings in the crucial analytical question: how do different old-age social security systems mitigate the income risks associated with various lifecourse transitions that older people experience. Thus, the principal objective of this comparative work is to investigate the relative importance of individual attributes and lifecourse events in determining the income experience of older people who live in different systems of old-age social provisions. These comparative analyses of income experience of older people define the third theme of the book.

1.3 From perception to definition

It is necessary to be clear from the outset about what we mean by 'old age' and 'older people'. This will define the population to be studied in this book. Next, we describe what we mean by 'ageing societies'. These base definitions will apply throughout the book.

1.3.1 Older people

When is someone old? Although the question seems simple, yet there is no universally accepted age above which a person is consid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Part I: Setting the Context
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Conceptualising Well-being of Older People
• Chapter 3 Methodological Choices in Measuring Well-being
• Chapter 4 The British Pension and Social Benefit System
• Part II: Empirical Findings
• Chapter 5 Coupling of Disadvantages: An Assessment of Income Deprivation and Limiting Health in Old Age
• Chapter 6 Income Mobility in Old Age
• Chapter 7 Snakes and Ladders: Covariates of Income Mobility in Old Age
• Chapter 8 Income Mobility of the Elderly in Great Britain and the Netherlands: A Comparative Investigation
• Part III: Conclusions
• Chapter 9 Synthesizing Discussion and Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index