Population ageing and intergenerational transfers: challenges for social welfare policies

According to the 2001 Census, individuals from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups comprised about 10% of the total UK population, while the younger age structure of the BME population means that BME groups comprise less than 4% of the population aged 50 and over. Research has emphasised the health and socio-economic disadvantage experienced by BME groups, as well as the key policy challenge associated with the ageing of the BME population, and with their pension protection. More than half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi older people, half of Indian older people and about one-third of Black Caribbean older people, are in the bottom-fifth of the income distribution, while pensioners from these groups are more likely to rely on means-tested benefits. This paper analyses data from the first wave of Understanding Society, a UK-wide representative survey, in order to explore patterns of state pension receipt and the determinants of membership in an occupational pension scheme among older people aged 65 and over in five groups: Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Caribbean and African. The paper revisits existing research exploring the interaction of ethnicity and gender to the detriment of pension protection for both women and men from the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities.

Population ageing is a global challenge, and understanding the dynamics of living arrangements in later life and their implications for the design of appropriate housing and long-term care is a critical policy issue. This paper investigates the dynamics of living arrangements amongst people aged 65 years old and over between 1991 and 2008, focussing on two types of accommodation: sheltered accommodation and residential care. The empirical research examines the rates and determinants of moving into sheltered accommodation and institutional care, using all 18 waves of the British Household Survey data and a discrete-time logistic regression model in order to model the probability of entering each type of accommodation. The paper shows that the factors associated with each of the two transitions in later life are different; for example age, health and marital status are significant determinants of an older person’s move into residential care, while the move into sheltered accommodation is in addition associated with an older person’s housing tenure and highest educational qualification. Such results indicate that the two kinds of transition may be more prevalent in different stages of the latter part of the life course, and have crucial implications for the design of future social care provision.

Some findings

The aim of the present work is to analyze the contributive aspect of the Algerian protection system, the increasing of the social law according more benefits to the population without increasing in financial resources of the system, otherwise the increasing of the informal employment without increasing in the social coverage of economically active population, generate an important shortfall to the social funds and a low rate of pension coverage to the elderly, face to this, the state intervene by the means of its social budget to compete the coverage and subsidize the social security funds, in this work, we will try to estimate the share of the social budget of the state as we will estimate the social contribution for the social protection system in the global incomes in order to know if the Algerian protection system is contributive ( bismarckian) or not ( beveridgian).
Key words: Algerian social protection system, pension system, beveridgian VS bismarckian system, contributive incomes social budget of the state.
COD JEL: B10, B13, C62, D61, D63.

The paper examines the changes in family structure and care provision for the elderly in Nigeria. Essentially, the family structure is changing from extended nature to nuclear structure, with impact on the wellbeing of the older persons now and into the future. This paper, therefore examine the impact of Changes in family structures on care of the older persons. Data was gathered using questionnaire and multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 250 respondents. Simple percentages cross tabulations and chi-square statistics were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that the changes in family structure are evident and occurred over time and that the quality of care the elderly received has diminished. The change in family structure also influence the patterns of care giving or support to aging parents, in addition the formal institution of care as substitute was disapproved by majority of the respondents. Such changes are due to modernization, industrialization, population explosion, urbanization, globalisation and nuclearization. The study, therefore, recommends that government should initiate policies to reduce the effect of changes in family structure and advises the family on the primacy of their care giving or support function.

Using the data from the waves of the survey “Well-being of Elderly in Anhui Province, China” conducted in 2001-2006, this study examines gender differences in medical expenditure of the rural elderly and its effect factors. The results show that proportion of older women who have medical expenditure is higher than that of older men, however, the former spend less than the latter. Tobit models for males and females separately are employed to identify gender differences in the effect factors of medical expenditure of older people. The results show that the older men's medical expenditure dependents on the predisposing factors, while the older women's expenditure relies on the enabling factors such as family and intergenerational supports, which reveals that older men tend to rely on their own economic conditions to meet the medical needs, while older women tend to rely on the financial support from their families. These results tell that, due to the cumulative disadvantages lasting a lifetime, with even worse health and greater demand for medical services, the older women’s medical expenses are relatively less than older men’s. Thus, the elderly vulnerable groups like older women should be of greater concern to policy-makers in future.

Fertility declines to below-replacement level is a common trend; and it will cause dramatic increases in the pension burdens of pay-you-go systems, in which the workers pay the benefits of retirees in the same periods. Funded pension systems transfer cohorts’ saving to consumption, and hence their pension burdens are invariant to fertility change. Comparing the difference between the pension burdens of the two systems in certain periods could provide relevant information to the decision on whether or not to establish funded pension systems to cope with population aging. The main obstacle in doing such a comparison is that, the burden of a pay-you-go system refers to certain periods, while that of a funded system accounts for life cycles. To overcome the obstacle, a time-referred cohort old-dependence ratio is proposed in this paper, which is comparable to the period old-dependence ratio at a certain time, purely demographic, and could be computed for all the countries and areas of the world under desire assumptions. Examples are given using data from China, Italy, Japan and Republic of Korea.

Ageing population challenges in Sweden

The aging population trend will implicate political challenges in Sweden as in many other countries. The demographic dependency ratio is often used as a measure to estimate the economic consequences of the population development. The dependency ratio has been relatively constant since the 1960s with a level of around 70, meaning that 100 of working age are to support 70 young and old people outside of working age. Due to Statistics Sweden’s latest population forecast, this level is expected to increase to more than 90 persons per 100 of working age. That is if the retirement age remains at the current level of 65 years.

The study examines consequences of alternative fertility and immigration assumptions. What happens with the ratio if fertility or immigration increases or decreases? Can immigration be a solution? Or can other measures be taken to keep the dependency ratio constant? It turns out that a raised pension age is an effective measure.

China is entering a new historical era that has as its demographic hallmark an ageing population. The emerging pattern of support for older people indicates the pursuit of a new balance between formal and informal support. Through the use of a variety of quantitative methodologies and nationally representative dataset, this study aims to provide robust estimates of how the increase in public programmes is influencing private transfers in China. The analysis of the factors that determine the incidence of receipt of transfers from children suggests that inter-generational transfers in China tend to target old parents that are in greater financial need. Moreover, the analysis of determinants of the size of transfer suggests that although altruism and exchange motives co-exist, the exchange motive dominates inter-generational transfers in urban China. This study argues that a gradual increase in public transfers will not crowd out private transfers, and, in cities, may actually strengthen private transfers.

This paper explores how long-term trends in demographic ageing shape interdependencies between generations. Our aim is to map changes in generational structure of the population in Europe and its major regions since the mid-20th century, and based on demographic projections, to cast light on the future developments until the end the of the 21st century. The data for the study are extracted from the database of UN Population Division. The paper builds on analytical approach developed by Golini and Iacoucucci who derived a series of intergenerational dependency and support measures from the age structure of the population. The results show a marked increase in the „height“ and top-heaviness of the generational structure. Particularly large increases in the relative size of older and middle-aged generations lend support to the notion that multigenerational ties sharply increase their importance as the structure of the population adjusts to longer lives and low fertility. The analysis reveals diverse outcomes for the younger and middle-age adults who provide the bulk of intergenerational support. In medium-term, the shift towards vertically extended and increasingly top-heavy generational structure will persist, irrespective of the projection scenario. With regard more distant future, the path of fertility trends appears crucial.