Population ageing and intergenerational transfers: challenges for social welfare policies

This paper investigates intra and inter cohort differences in private pension contributions, examining the extent of variation associated with key socio-demographic characteristics including gender, marital status and educational attainment. Using data from the Family Resources Survey from 1999-2000, 2004-2005 and 2009-2010 to understand these trends, this study aims to assess the extent to which the current and proposed changes to the legislative framework will address the particular circumstances of those most likely to be at risk of financial under-provision at old age. Initial findings from bivariate analysis using age, period and cohort perspectives indicate a downward trend in private pension participation by men, within and across cohorts over time. Women, in contrast, have maintained similar levels of contribution rates during the period under investigation. There are notable variations between men and women depending on their marital statuses, with single individuals across all cohorts less likely to make private pension contributions, even as they approach old age. For both men and women, later exit from education is associated with a higher incidence of private pension contributions, although over the period of investigation, there is a fall in the levels of men making private pension contribution.

The objectives of this paper are ; (a) to trace the population aging underway in South Africa and Botswana and (b) to explain its impacts on the changing patterns of intergenerational relations.
The process of aging is slow in both countries. In South Africa, proportion of aged 65+ is 5.4 percent in 2007 while it is 5.0 percent in Botswana in 2001. The median age has increased from 15.7 years to 20.1 years in Botswana. The index of aging, defined as the proportion of population 65+ to the population aged below 15 years, has moved from 16 to 18 percent only, which , again, implies slow aging process in the country.

The process of population aging is seriously hampered by AIDS related deaths. Botswana ranks among the hardest hit with an overall HIV prevalence of 17.1 percent and in South Africa it is 11.1 percent. It appears that the impact of HIV/AIDS is comparatively higher among males.

The socio-economic impacts of the aging process ,especially on the emerging patterns of intergenerational relations, will be elaborated in the paper.

Abstract
There has not been any study in India to understand the relationship between public and private inter-household transfers and the impact of such transfers on the livings standards of the older households. Part of the problem is the lack of adequate data; data sets containing both private transfer and public transfer are scarce. Therefore, the key contributions of this paper would be to take into account endogeneity of income and resource flows into the household; investigate the relationship between public and private transfers and assess the economic effects of transfers on the households. The study uses data from the survey titled ‘Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE)’ carried out by WHO and International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in 2007 in six states of India namely Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The sample consists of 12, 198 households with at least one person aged 50 years and above. An appropriate econometric technique would be adopted to address the endogeneity of public transfer and income when estimating the determinants of private transfer. For the estimation of the incidence of poverty, household equivalent income that reflects total income and the number of children and adults in the household would be calculated by using OECD scale.

This study investigates association of elderly abuse and social adjustment in rural settings in Bargarh district of Odisha, India. While analyzing the relationship between elderly abuse and social adjustment underlined socio-economic factors (age, education, living arrangement, gender, education, income and marital status) and individual status variable (physical health, mental health and family relationship) are introduced as a moderator. This study is conducted among 360 elderly (60+), including both male and females, distributed across 18 primary sampling units (PSUs) through multistage sampling design. Results indicated decreased cohesion and adaptability in socio –economic factors and individual status increases perception of social isolation, and poorer social adjustment among abused elderly. Elderly who were abused showed a low social adjustment score and vice versa. , These pattern of evidence suggest that the abused elderly who had low social adjustment score and lived in social isolation may lead to depression, hopelessness, unhappiness shame and guilt leading to stress which in turn effects their health in longer run.
Keywords: Abuse, social adjustment, socio-economic factors, elderly

There is a general perception that before the crisis there was a waste of money by the government and the families in Spain. It is important, then, to analyze if this misspending was made equally among age groups and to what extent it was due to the government or to families. This will have very different implications on the restructuration of the transfers system, which seems to be one of the main current concerns of governments. We propose here to analyze the evolution of lifecycle deficit and their related age reallocations profiles (transfers and asset-based) from 2000 to 2008 for Spain using National Transfers Accounts methodology. The aggregates show that the lifecycle deficit increased a 52%, meaning that consumption increased more rapidly than labor income. This implies that the necessity to finance consumption through age reallocations increased highly in few years. This tendency has been accompanied by an increase of the public share in the total consumption of the economy, growing from 25% in 2000 to 28% in 2008. This work aims to shed some light on how these changes have occurred by age, showing which age groups have benefit more or can be more affected by changes in the transfer system due to the crisis.

We investigate the reallocation of resources across age and gender in a comparative European setting. Our analysis is based on the NTA methodology, NTA-data, as well as on income data from the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and data from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). The aggregate NTA life cycle deficit is introduced as a concept of an economic dependency ratio that allows for flexible age limits and age specific levels of economic dependency. We move beyond the current NTA methodology and study gender differences in the generation of income and extend our analysis by unpaid household work. We combine paid work as well as unpaid household work into a measure for total production and consumption at each age and by gender. Our results clearly indicate that a reform of the welfare system needs to take into account not only public transfers but also private transfers, in particular those that relate to services produced within the household for own consumption.

This paper examines the life-cycle dynamics of real wages and labor supply in Sweden. The descriptive results lend support to the intertemporal substitution hypothesis (ISH), as the age patterns of both real wages and labor force participation (LFP) are hump-shaped. However, the age-wage profiles increasingly shift towards older ages over time, whereas the age-LFP profiles do not. This leads to an accentuated difference-in-differences of the two variables over the ages 45-64, and, in turn, casts doubt on the explanatory power of ISH for the senior labor supply at the extensive margin. My econometric investigation of old-age LFP further implies that, at least at the aggregate level, the backward-bending supply curve may better reflect the retirement transition rather than intra- and/or inter-temporal substitution. Based on the estimated age-specific elasticities, I found spectacular life-cycle variation in the responses of labor supply to wage change. This suggests that an array of life-cycle parameters (rather than a constant elasticity for all ages) is needed in calibrating the Overlapping Generation Model (OLG).

Using data from a survey of four towns in Yi County of Anhui Province taken in 2008, this paper analyzes the effects of sons’ marital status on intergenerational transfers, including financial transfers, instrument transfers, and emotional transfers provided to parents, as well as co-residence arrangements. Random-effect regression analysis showed that son’s marital status has strong effects on financial transfers to and co-residence with parents. Compared with married sons who received more marriage help with marriage costs from their parents, older unmarried sons (so-called forced bachelors) transfer less finance to their parents, and are more likely to live with their parents. Parents’ intergenerational transfers to sons, as well as the parents’ own needs and sons’ capability all affect the intergenerational transfers from sons. In addition, whether they co-reside with parents also influences parents’ financial transfers from their sons. These results show that both theories of exchange and altruism are simultaneously relevant in the context of the marriage squeeze of contemporary rural China.

Young dependent under 15 years have support of their LCD both from the public and private transfers but the magnitude of from private transfer is more than five times than that from public transfers. Public current transfer to young dependents is 10.4 times the transfers to old dependents. On the other hand old dependents in 60 plus do not get support from intra-household transfers though they have net gain from public transfers and inter-household transfers. It is noted that old dependents have to rely on asset-based reallocations to support LCD.
The totality of public current transfers (education, health and others), in kind transfers and social benefit transfers not in kind is Rs. 558953 crores and the corresponding share of these transfers are 18.8, 24.1 and 57.1 per cents respectively. The revenue of government from income, wealth and corporation taxes, indirect tax, other current transfers and public deficit transfers constitute 24.9, 49, 3.7 and 22.4 percents of the total collection of Rs. 558953 crores. In constant 2004 Indian Rupees (INR), the ratio of public transfer receipts to transfer payments shall decline from 1.07 in 2004 to 0.98 in 2051 and during this period ratio net gain of young and old dependents to the net gain of working age population from public transfers decreases from 1.56 to 0.84.

Present paper focuses on care and support elderly gets in family and their perceptions towards younger generation in rural Maharashtra. Issues like situation of aged in the context of respect and care, how the aged and their subsequent generation perceive ageing, elderly’s views and opinions about young generation have been explored in this study. Further, the impact of various socio-economic characteristics on the perceptions of elderly towards younger generation is discussed in detail. Data for this study was collected from the rural Maharashtra using semi structured interview schedule. 600 males and females were interviewed using systematic sampling technique and use multivariate analysis. Result reveals that one third of elderly in rural area are not getting proper care and support from their children/family, many of them perceive ageing as a problem. The study also shows that the elderly living alone with their spouses develop a more negative perception towards the younger generation as compared to those living with their children. The study highlights the need for company of either married or unmarried children to make elderly feel more secure.