Asghar Zaidi

COMPARING INCOMES WHEN NEEDS DIFFER: EQUIVALIZATION FOR THE EXTRA COSTS OF DISABILITY IN THE U.K

Equivalization of incomes for household composition is accepted practice when measuring poverty but other variations in needs are rarely acknowledged. This paper uses data from two U.K. household surveys to quantify the extra costs of living associated with disability. The extra costs of disability are derived by comparing the “standard of living” of households with and without disabled members at a given income, having controlled for other sources of variation. Logit and ordered logit regressions are used to estimate the relationship between a range of standard of living indicators, income, and disability. The extra costs of disability derived are substantial and rise with severity of disability. Unadjusted incomes significantly understate the problem of low income amongst disabled people, and thereby in the population as a whole.

Socio-Economic Differences in Mortality

The analyses included in the report show that there are big socio-economic differences in mortality, especially for men, and they appear to have become bigger over time. The report discusses implications of mortality differentials for five major areas of pension policy: the progressivity of the pension system, the pension eligibility age, the retirement incentives, future pension expenditures and private pensions. The empirical work shows that the mortality differentials reduce progressivity in pension systems. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that raising retirement age is not more unfair to socio-economic groups with lower life expectancy. Les analyses presentees ici montrent qu’il existe de fortes differences socioeconomiques en termes de mortalite, surtout chez les hommes, et qu’elles se sont apparemment accentuees au fil du temps. Ce document examine les consequences des ecarts de mortalite pour cinq grands aspects de la politique de retraite : la progressivite du systeme de retraite, l’âge d’ouverture des droits a pension, les incitations a la retraite, les depenses de retraite futures et les pensions privees. Les travaux empiriques font apparaitre que les ecarts de mortalite reduisent la progressivite des regimes de retraite. De plus, des donnees d’observation montrent que le relevement de l’âge de la retraite n’est pas plus penalisant pour les categories socioeconomiques ayant une esperance de vie plus courte.

Active Ageing in CIS Countries: Semantics, Challenges, and Responses.

Although the CIS countries are connected together by the legacy of breaking away from the Soviet Union, they have had a distinctive transition course and are rather diverse in terms of the population ageing challenges and policy responses in place. The commonality is that a comprehensive national strategy on ageing is lacking, and many of necessary reforms were put aside owing to political uncertainties, lack of societal consensus, and financial instability. The notion of active ageing is associated with the term “accelerated ageing,” which is understood to be an individual living a life under harsh living conditions or a society experiencing rapid increases in the relative number of older persons, and therefore it carries a negative connotation. Yet, in the same spirit as the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations 2012, the CIS countries have initiated sectoral programmes towards enhancing employment of older workers, social participation of older people in the society in a wider sense and also measures promoting health and independent living of older persons.

Population Aging and Intergenerational Solidarity: International Policy Frameworks and European Public Opinion

The population aging challenges facing the European Union countries have been articulated in two ways: the financial sustainability of public welfare systems and the adequacy of retirement incomes and social services. The ideas underlying social sustainability, though less clearly defined, encompass not just both of these challenges but also address the need to ensure intergenerational solidarity, formally or informally, in countries experiencing aging populations. This paper identifies policy challenges put forward by the United Nations and by the European Union regarding that need while also reporting on the opinions of European citizens on various aspects of intergenerational solidarity.

Measuring active and healthy ageing in Europe

The active and healthy ageing measure reported here is calculated for the 28 European Union countries, with a specific focus on the current generation of older people and by using the latest data from multiple surveys. It covers diverse aspects of active and healthy ageing, by measuring older people’s contribution with respect to not just employment but also their unpaid familial, social and cultural contributions and their independent, healthy and secure living. The article presents the first-of-its-kind quantitative measure of active and healthy ageing in the literature on active and healthy ageing which hitherto has focused largely on concepts, definitions and public policy strategies. In this pursuit, an important contribution of this measure, referred to as the Active Ageing Index (‘AAI’), is that it also captures how countries differ with respect to capacity and enabling environments for active and healthy ageing. The AAI offers a breakdown not just by four domains of active and healthy ageing but also by gender. Key findings are that Sweden comes at the top of the country ranking, followed closely by Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands and Ireland. The four southern European countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain and Malta) are middle-ranked countries. Greece and many of the Central European countries are at the bottom, highlighting much greater untapped potentials of active and healthy ageing among older people in these countries and a need for greater policy efforts. Women fare worse than men in most countries, identifying a need for an emphasis on reducing gender disparity in experiences of active and healthy ageing. The AAI tool developed has the potential to identify the social policy mechanisms behind the differential achievements of active and healthy ageing, for example, what active and healthy ageing strategies have driven top performers, and in what respect the bottom-ranked countries have lagged behind.

Should Pension Systems Recognise "Hazardous and Arduous Work"?

Special pensions for workers in hazardous or arduous jobs have long been a feature of the pension landscape and, recently, they are the subject of a great deal of debate in the pension arenas of many OECD countries. Such pensions are historically rooted in the idea that people who work in hazardous or arduous jobs – say, underground mining – merit special treatment. The rationale for this scheme is that hazardous or arduous work increases mortality and reduces life expectancy, thus reducing the time during which retirement benefits can be enjoyed. This results in such workers being made eligible for earlier access to pension benefits than otherwise available in that country’s general pension scheme... Les regimes de retraite speciaux pour les professions dangereuses ou penibles existent de longue date. Depuis quelques temps, ils suscitent de multiples debats dans de nombreux pays de l’OCDE. Ces regimes ont pour origine l’idee selon laquelle les personnes qui exercent un metier dangereux ou penible, l’exploitation miniere souterraine par exemple, meritent un traitement particulier. Cette idee se justifie par le fait que ces metiers augmentent la mortalite et diminuent l’esperance de vie, reduisant ainsi la periode pendant laquelle les personnes qui les exercent peuvent profiter de leurs prestations de retraite. C’est pourquoi elles ont le droit de partir a la retraite avant l’echeance fixee par le regime de retraite general national...

Creating and using the evidence base: the case of the Active Ageing Index

The value of evidence-based policy-making depends on the quality and robustness of the available data. Many conceptual and operational difficulties restrict the comparability of the data collected in large-scale international surveys and their usefulness as an evidence base. Taking the Active Ageing Index (AAI) as a case study, this article argues that a greater understanding of the context of data sourcing and application is vital to the usefulness and transferability of the evidence generated. The difficulties of determining the effectiveness of evidence-based policy must also be understood in the context of the economic and political volatility of particular countries and, possibly, different traditions across nations in applied and academic research. Drawing on recent AAI findings, the article suggests how the AAI could be used most effectively as a toolkit by policy-makers seeking to devise evidence-informed active ageing strategies.

Ageing, Health and Pensions in Europe: An Economic Perspective

The ageing of populations is one of the main economic and social developments shaping the 21st century. Population ageing affects welfare states, as it creates the need for reforms of pension-, healthcare- and social care systems, which will have reverberations for European welfare states and their labour markets, and the health and well-being of European citizens. Yet, ageing also yields new opportunities and benefits, raising important issues such as how societies can benefit longer from the talents of populations enjoying rising longevity, and how human resources can be maintained better during the entire life course. Since population ageing is proceeding more rapidly in Europe than in other continents, Europe can be expected to take the lead in social innovations aimed at adopting suitable policies for successful ageing.

Inequality in active ageing: evidence from a new individual-level index for European countries

ABSTRACT In the context of emerging challenges and opportunities associated with population ageing, the study of inequality in active-ageing outcomes is critical to the design of appropriate and effective social policies. While there is much discussion about active ageing at the aggregate country level, little is known about inequality in active-ageing experiences within countries. Based on the existing literature on active ageing, this paper proposes an individual-level composite active ageing index based on Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data. The individual-level nature of the index allows us to analyse inequality in experiences of active ageing within selected European countries. One important motivation behind measuring active ageing at the individual level is that it allows for a better understanding of unequal experiences of ageing, which may otherwise be masked in aggregate-level measures of active ageing. Results show large differences in the distribution of individual-level active ageing across the 13 European countries covered and across age groups. Furthermore, there is a positive association between the country-level active ageing index and the equality of its distribution within a country. Hence, countries with the lowest average active ageing index tend to have the most unequal distribution in active-ageing experiences. For nine European countries, where temporal data are also available, we find that inequality in active-ageing outcomes decreased in the period 2004 to 2013.

Old Age Work Participation

To understand how to raise labor force participation of older workers, it is necessary to understand demand, supply, and institutional factors. Labor supply and retirement decisions of older workers are at the core of microeconomic research and many countries have recently reformed their pension systems to make early retirement financially less attractive. Noneconomic factors like quality of work, health status, social networks, and peer group behavior are important as well. The demand side of the labor market is equally important, particularly now that recent pension reforms have raised labor supply.