Angela M. O’Rand

The Race Is to the Swift: Socioeconomic Origins, Adult Education, and Wage Attainment

The “winners” in today’s winner‐take‐all labor markets are differentiated by advanced levels of educational attainment, especially higher degrees. This article applies a sociological model of cumulative dis/advantage to the baby‐boom cohort to examine whether life course timing differences in educational attainment help explain wage differentials by midlife. It finds that advantaged social origins lead to early postsecondary completion of degrees, which, in turn, yield higher wages. A pathway of cumulative disadvantage is also evident, where those least advantaged exit schooling early in life, do not return as adults, and earn low wages. In a middle path, advantaged social origins promote adult school attainment primarily for those without degrees but generally without the wage boosts associated with attainment earlier in life.

Cross-national comparison of sex differences in health and mortality in Denmark, Japan and the US.

The present study aims to compare the direction and magnitude of sex differences in mortality and major health dimensions across Denmark, Japan and the US. The Human Mortality Database was used to examine sex differences in age-specific mortality rates. The Danish twin surveys, the Danish 1905-Cohort Study, the Health and Retirement Study, and the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging were used to examine sex differences in health. Men had consistently higher mortality rates at all ages in all three countries, but they also had a substantial advantage in handgrip strength compared with the same-aged women. Sex differences in activities of daily living (ADL) became pronounced among individuals aged 85+ in all three countries. Depression levels tended to be higher in women, particularly, in Denmark and the HRS, and only small sex differences were observed in the immediate recall test and Mini-Mental State Exam. The present study revealed consistent sex differentials in survival and physical health, self-rated health and cognition at older ages, whereas the pattern of sex differences in depressive symptoms was country-specific.

Race-Ethnicity and Health Trajectories: Tests of Three Hypotheses across Multiple Groups and Health Outcomes.

Racial-ethnic disparities in static levels of health are well documented. Less is known about racial-ethnic differences in age trajectories of health. The few studies on this topic have examined only single health outcomes and focused on black-white disparities. This study extends prior research by using a life course perspective, panel data from the Health and Retirement Study, and multilevel growth curve models to investigate racial-ethnic differences in the trajectories of serious conditions and functional limitations among blacks, Mexican Americans, and whites. We test three hypotheses on the nature of racial-ethnic disparities in health across the life course (aging-as-leveler, persistent inequality, and cumulative disadvantage). Results controlling for mortality selection reveal that support for the hypotheses varies by health outcome, racial-ethnic group, and life stage. Controlling for childhood socioeconomic status, adult social and economic resources, and health behaviors reduces but does not eliminate racial-ethnic disparities in health trajectories.

Gender and the Devolution of Pension Risks in the US

This article uses data from multiple waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine inequality in the accumulation of pension balances in private accounts for two cohorts of workers in the US. The new occupational pension environment is characterized by the rise of defined contribution plans and the devolution of risk and responsibility for retirement saving. While men and women in this environment face new pension risks, women continue to bear greater risks associated with lower workplace earnings and family position. Unmarried women consistently have the greatest risk of low pension balances in defined contribution plans (DC) and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Divorce, unstable employment histories and lower levels of education and income decrease pension savings. The authors conclude that although recent changes have increased women’s access to occupational pensions, these changes have preserved, and perhaps increased, familiar disadvantages associated with gender, marital status and labor market position.

Convergence, Institutionalization, and Bifurcation: Gender and the Pension Acquisition Process

Worldwide problems related to inflation, growing economic interdependence, and shifting demographic structures are requiring that social welfare policies be scrutinized and reorganized. In response to these problems, the 1970s and 1980s have witnessed much legislative and market based redistributive activity in Western Europe and the United States, particularly in the areas of health, family maintenance, and pension provision. In all areas of social welfare, legislative and market-based strategies are reconsidering the “artificial separation between ‘public’ and ‘private’” (Rainwater & Rein, 1983, p. 112).

The Future of the Life Course

The future of the life course in the United States over the next several decades, and in some other late-modern societies, is best considered in the light of major demographic and institutional changes. The life course—when defined as interdependent sequences of age-related social roles across life domains (family, education, work, health, leisure)—is a product of the linkages among state (welfare), market and familial (gender) institutions and demographic behaviors across the life span. When these linkages are tightly coupled and universally salient in a population their coherence and normative strength lead to a more highly institutionalized, age-graded life course. Alternatively, when these linkages are loosely coupled, variability (de-institutionalization) in the life course increases: the relationship of age to role transitions weakens and the synchronization of roles across life domains becomes less standardized.

Private Pensions in International Perspective

In the mid-1990s, in response to the spreading problem of financing public pay as you go (PAYGO) pension systems across industrialized countries experiencing population aging and economic globalization, the World Bank called for a three pillar model of pension policy to avert the old age crisis (World Bank 1994). The first pillar was to consist of minimal public sector defined benefit pensions bas ed mainly on PAYGO financing; the objectives were redistribution and poverty reduction. The second was to consist of earningsrelated or occupational pensions that could have public (government subsidized) or private financing arrangements; the objective was to promote or enforce saving. The third was to consist of private individual savings, with the objective to encourage individual, voluntary saving. Diverse mixes of these three policy alternatives already existed across advanced societies but the decade following the report has been characterized by more and more policy shifts across countries with different welfare state legacies towards more private and voluntary schemes. Meanwhile, the United States pension system was already based on a three pillar structure in 1994 and has tilted towards the third pillar vigorously. This chapter will consider private pensions in an international perspective. First, the range of welfare state legacies across countries will be briefly summarized. Second, the history of private pensions in the United States will be reviewed, with an emphasis on the recent two-decade shift from defined benefit to defined contribution occupational pension plans and recent debates about privatizing a portion of its PAYGO plan. Finally, selected international comparisons of recent policy changes will be reviewed among countries facing severe population aging trends that are forcing them to privatize their systems and move retirement ages later. Paradoxically, perhaps, the three pillar system has both separated the public from the private occupational and individual sectors and made them more interdependent. In some countries the boundaries between the pillars are blurred.

Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, and Retirement: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

INTRODUCTION Physical activity and sedentary behavior are major risk factors for chronic disease. These behaviors may change at retirement, with implications for health in later life. The study objective was to describe longitudinal patterns of moderate to vigorous and domain-specific physical activity and TV watching by retirement status. METHODS Participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (n=6,814) were recruited from six U.S. communities and were aged 45-84 years at baseline. Retirement status and frequency and duration of domain-specific physical activity (recreational walking, transport walking, non-walking leisure activity, caregiving, household, occupational/volunteer) and TV watching were self-reported at four study exams (2000 to 2012). Fixed effect linear regression models were used to describe longitudinal patterns in physical activity and TV watching by retirement status overall and stratified by socioeconomic position. Analyses were conducted in 2017. RESULTS Of 4,091 Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis participants not retired at baseline, 1,012 (25%) retired during a median of 9 years follow-up. Retirement was associated with a 10% decrease (95% CI= -15%, -5%) in moderate to vigorous physical activity and increases of 13% to 29% in recreational walking, household activity, and TV watching. Among people of low socioeconomic position, the magnitude of association was larger for moderate to vigorous physical activity. Among people of high socioeconomic position, the magnitude of association was larger for non-walking leisure and household activity. CONCLUSIONS The retirement transition was associated with changes in physical activity and TV watching. To inform intervention development, future research is needed on the determinants of behavior change after retirement, particularly among individuals of low socioeconomic position.

Sex Differences in Genetic Associations With Longevity

Key Points Question Are there sex differences in genetic associations with longevity? Findings In this case-control study of 2178 cases and 2299 controls who were Chinese with Han ethnicity, sex-specific genome-wide association study and sex-specific polygenic risk score analyses on longevity showed substantial and significant differences in genetic associations with longevity between men and women. Findings indicated that previously published genome-wide association studies on longevity identified some sex-independent genetic variants but missed sex-specific longevity loci and pathways. Meaning These novel findings contribute to filling the gaps in the research literature, and further investigations may substantially contribute to individualized health care and more effective and targeted health interventions for male and female elderly individuals.

Lags and Leaps: The Dynamics of Demography, Economy and Policy and Their Implications for Life Course Research

This essay proposes that research on the life course be placed explicitly within the larger global context to understand the forces of history and social change that bear upon it. Population aging, migration, and global financialization are major accelerating forces for change—leaps—over recent decades. However, persistent cultural and policy legacies across countries and regions lag behind these changes. Three areas of life course are proposed to reflect the complex and sometimes countervailing dynamics of these macro-level forces. The first is a more conceptual proposal to guide life course research in general. It focuses on the life course as a continuous manifold process with diverse temporality in a population. Age-graded, phasic constructions of the life course are treated as too restrictive to account for growing variations in education, family, work and health transitions across the life course and in the pace of aging in advanced countries but also extending to developing countries. The second focuses on the ascendance of market institutions, especially financial institutions, in the maintenance of individual and household financial and health decision-making. Financial and health literacy are new life course risks which pervade the life course. Third, increased migration levels over recent decades, especially to some advanced countries, are changing the demographic compositions of successive cohorts who face changing educational opportunities and workplace protections. The life course implications of migration are now matters of speculation, which life course research should address in the future as data permit.