Suchergebnisse

PurposeSouth Korea has shown ultra-low fertility since the 2000s despite a massive expansion of pro-natal policies. The purpose of this research is to analyse institutional and socio-cultural configurations surrounding Korea's pro-natal policy and provide implications as to why the comprehensive packages have not produced intended outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis study assumes institutional complementarities, suggesting that the effectiveness of policy depends on various support factors. Drawing out insights from the framework of de-familisation, the authors construct a gender and family framework to analyse the pro-natal policy configurations in Korea.FindingsLabour market policies in Korea have explicitly aimed to support dual-earner couples and protect women's employment status after childbirth. However, the dualistic labour market and remaining female-caregiver norms lead to the polarisation of couples into dual earners and male breadwinners. In family policy, the government has rapidly increased affordable childcare services, but widespread distrust in private services and generous birth-related cash benefits formulate a tension between de-familisation and continued familisation. Other welfare programmes that attach welfare rights to marital status also prolong female-caregiver norms in institutional arrangements. The findings suggest that the ambivalence between recent policy developments and the existing arrangements can limit the effectiveness of the policy packages.Originality/valueThe framework based on institutional complementarities addresses the limitations of previous studies concentrating on the statistical testing of individual policy effects. A similar approach can be applied to other countries showing major policy efforts but producing unsatisfactory outcomes.

It is widely accepted that people with disabilities incur additional expenditures on transport, heating, equipment and other items. In this article, we estimate the magnitude of these extra costs of living for adults with disabilities aged 50–65 across 15 countries of Europe using the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data. Drawing on the standard of living approach of Zaidi and Burchardt, we compare the incomes required by households with and without adults with disabilities to obtain an equivalent standard of living. We advance upon this research by drawing on the cross-nationally harmonized data of adults aged 50+ from the SHARE. The results suggest that there are substantial extra costs of disability in these countries: around 44 percent of income for a household with an adult reporting a work-related disability and somewhat less than 30 percent of income for a household with an adult who receives disability benefits. Applying an equivalization scale based on these figures increases the overall poverty incidence rate, especially for households with disabled adult members. These findings thus have implications for analysing the entitlement and benefit levels for disability support programmes and for devising accurate poverty estimates concerning persons with disabilities.

Alexandre Sidorenko – Senior Advisor, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna, Austria. Email: sidorenko.alexandre@gmail.com
Asghar Zaidi – Professor in International Social Policy, University of Southampton, UK. Email: Asghar.Zaidi@soton.ac.uk
The central goal of this article is to review progress made in implementing the international policy frameworks on ageing, focusing on the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing (VIPAA) and in more detail on the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA). The article offers a critical examination of the current approaches to monitoring and assessing the implementation process, outlining promising avenues for the future. In this way, the limitations of the current procedures for following the policy priorities of the MIPAA can be highlighted. What is found is that progress in many countries is hampered by inherent subjectivity in assessing and reporting advancement, lack of continuity and consistency, and difficulties in comparing the national level progress with international development in the same areas. The current year, 2017 / 2018, is momentous as we reach the end of the third five-year implementation cycle of the MIPAA. Introspection now should not merely focus on assessing the progress made but also on how the implementation of the MIPAA could be strengthened. In the same spirit, the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals presents new opportunities; especially its pledges 'Leave no one behind' and 'Reach the furthest behind first', which imply that the older population can serve as agents of development. In moving forward, an essential requirement will have to be the establishment of an internationally acceptable set of indicators, which can be employed for assessing national progress in addressing the challenges and opportunities of ageing and monitoring the international efforts to implement international policy frameworks like the MIPAA. Along the lines of the dashboard of indicators used in the Active Ageing Index 'AAI', there should be a MIPAA monitoring toolkit with different layers of indicators, which are aligned with the three priority directions of the MIPAA.

Central and Eastern Europe is a unique region in terms of its social, economic anddemographic trends, particularly because of legacy of the communist system andtransformation to a market system. The transition coincided with a rapiddemographic change in which younger generation was able to reorganise themselvesrelatively easily whereas older people found this change much more difficult. Thispaper builds a picture of well-being of older population in eight Eastern Europeancountries: Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey andUkraine and compares it to eight other European Union (EU) member States of thesame region. We used the Global AgeWatch Index – an analytical framework ofZaidi (2013 ) offering comparative analysis of older people's well-being across theworld. It is extended by gender-specific analysis for two domains: health status andcapability. The results show that the combined Index value of eight Eastern andSouth-Eastern non-EU countries is considerably below the average observed foreight EU member States, however, in some individual indicators, some of the non-EU states performed better than the EU countries. The evidence summarised can beused to assess the position of the region and points to areas where policy changes arenecessary.

Ensuring active ageing, i.e. the optimisation of opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age, is an important growth strategy for the EU. Achieving a successful active ageing policy will require a sea change in thinking about what ageing means in both economic and social terms.

We live in a world where women over fifty account for almost one quarter of the total population. This article highlights the potential of global population ageing as a vehicle for socio-economic development and demonstrates the value of taking a gendered approach to ageing and development. With the use of country level data on gender equality, education, health and life expectancy in later life, the analysis shows that older women in low-income countries face disproportionate disadvantages relative to both their male counterparts in low-income countries and female counterparts in high-income countries. For instance, an older woman in a low-income country is over 24 times less likely to have completed secondary education than an older woman in a high-income country. Despite the widely documented female survival advantage, an older woman in a low-income country spend a smaller percentage of her remaining life expectancy at age sixty in good health than her male counterparts. Our analysis show there are strong correlations between gender inequality and diminished life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age 60 amongst both genders, indicating that both older women and older men fare better when they live in societies which realise the contributions of women to the development process. The correlation is particularly strong in low-income countries,suggesting countries with the lowest levels of economic development have the most to gain from promoting gender equality. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015) had given an exclusive place to women in the standalone goal on maternal mortality and a goal on gender equality and female empowerment with explicit indicators on school enrollment amongst girls and literacy amongst young women. These goals are linked to the achievements such as the near doubling of the number of women in parliament and a near halving of the maternal mortality ratio over the last twenty years. However the development discourse has given minimal attention to women beyond reproductive age. The new, broader post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals provide unparalleled opportunities to place gender back on the emerging ageing and development agenda, support both older men and women to realise their potential and in the process maximize opportunities for prosperity and wellbeing for all.

Die Verfasser geben zunächst einen Überblick über die gewählten Indikatoren zur Messung von Armut sowie über die Begriffe "Armutsgefährdung" und "materielle Deprivation". Die folgende empirische Untersuchung beleuchtet die Situation älterer Menschen in der Europäischen Union. Die soziale Lage älterer Menschen wird verglichen mit der Lage von Menschen im Erwerbsalter und der Gesamtbevölkerung. Dabei werden soziodemografische Merkmale wie das Geschlecht und Unterschiede zwischen älteren und jüngeren Alterskohorten innerhalb der älteren Bevölkerung berücksichtigt. Ein weiterer empirischer Abschnitt zeigt Entwicklungstendenzen der Armutsgefährdung im Alter zwischen 2004 und 2008 auf und vergleicht diese mit der Generation der Kinder und Jugendlichen. In einem letzten Teil wird ein alternativer Indikator zur Messung von Armut innerhalb der Europäischen Union genutzt - die materielle Deprivation. (ICE2)

Die Verfasser geben zunächst einen Überblick über die gewählten Indikatoren zur Messung von Armut sowie über die Begriffe "Armutsgefährdung" und "materielle Deprivation". Die folgende empirische Untersuchung beleuchtet die Situation älterer Menschen in der Europäischen Union. Die soziale Lage älterer Menschen wird verglichen mit der Lage von Menschen im Erwerbsalter und der Gesamtbevölkerung. Dabei werden soziodemografische Merkmale wie das Geschlecht und Unterschiede zwischen älteren und jüngeren Alterskohorten innerhalb der älteren Bevölkerung berücksichtigt. Ein weiterer empirischer Abschnitt zeigt Entwicklungstendenzen der Armutsgefährdung im Alter zwischen 2004 und 2008 auf und vergleicht diese mit der Generation der Kinder und Jugendlichen. In einem letzten Teil wird ein alternativer Indikator zur Messung von Armut innerhalb der Europäischen Union genutzt - die materielle Deprivation. (ICE2).

"Die Lebenserwartung der EuropäerInnen steigt stetig an. Eine zu beobachtende Konsequenz daraus ist ein höherer Anteil älterer Menschen in europäischen Gesellschaften. Da die Erwerbsjahre nicht proportional zur Lebenserwartung ansteigen, verbringen ältere Menschen heute einen größeren Abschnitt ihres Lebens in der sogenannten Dritten Lebensphase, dem Ruhestand. Aus einer gesundheitlich und finanziell guten Lage heraus, schaffen es viele ältere Menschen diese gewonnene Lebenszeit für neue soziale und auch wirtschaftliche Erfahrungen zu nutzen. Gleichzeitig muss jedoch hervorgehoben werden, dass ältere Menschen keinesfalls eine homogene Gesellschaftsgruppe sind, sondern sich durch ihre gesundheitliche, soziale und auch finanzielle Verfassung voneinander unterscheiden. Eine weitreichende individuelle Erfahrung des Alterns ist der Eintritt einer
Behinderung, die vielfach mit deutlichen gesundheitlichen Einschränkungen verbunden ist und 'Active Ageing' zu einem bloßen Schlagwort macht." (Autorenrefrat)

Using a large panel dataset, this article investigates the degree of, and explanatory factors for, income mobility amongst the elderly in Sweden during the 1990s. It contributes to literature on welfare indicators for the older population as it supplements the welfare picture of the income adequacy with insights into income certainty during old age. Our methodological approach is to work with the administrative register data for Sweden, and this allows us to use a reliable record of incomes for a large sample of the elderly. Results for Sweden‐born and foreign‐born elderly persons are analysed separately and compared with corresponding groups of people of working age. Not surprisingly, nearly all of our results indicate that the income of the older population is more stable than that of the working age population, and upward income mobility is not as usual among the elderly as among other groups. The multivariate regression analyses identify several explanatory factors affecting those elderly who experienced income mobility. Most importantly, the death of a spouse increases the probability of downward income mobility, particularly amongst women. These and other findings of this research point to triggers of income poverty in old age that should be taken into account in policies concerned with the level and indexation of retirement income of future pensioners.

This article provides a brief summary of the most recent changes in public pension policies in the countries of the European Union and describes how they affect pension benefits for future pensioners. The pension systems in Europe have been changing fast. The common trends are that the generosity of public pension benefits is on the decline, the changes are likely to shift more risks towards individuals and there are fewer possibilities of redistribution. Our analyses point towards the importance of a more comprehensive assessment of these reforms so as to reduce the risk of pensioner poverty in the future.