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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The influence of the welfare state on the number of young old persons | | Author(s) | Kathrin Komp, Theo van Tilburg, Marjolein Broese van Groenou |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 29, part 4, May 2009 |
| Pages | pp 609-624 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Social welfare ; Retirement policy ; Middle aged ; Young elderly ; Comparison ; Europe. |
| Annotation | Many current discussions of welfare state reform focus on the "young old", a group now generally perceived as healthy people past retirement age without a legal responsibility for dependent people in need of care. For the welfare state, they constitute a resource whose activities are hard to steer. This article focuses on the influence of the welfare state on the number of "young old" people. It describes different ways in which the welfare state influences the number of young old people, and investigates whether variations in the regulations for the ages of normal, early and late retirement are the prime cause. The paper also estimates the share of the young old among those aged 50-90 in 10 European countries in 2004 using comparable data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). These shares ranged between 36% and 49% for men and between 35% and 52% for women. High shares were found in continental European countries, and low shares in Scandinavian countries and the UK. The shares in southern European countries varied between countries and by gender. To explain the variations in the share, country differences in retirement regulations proved helpful but insufficient. When the overall influence of the welfare state on the share of young old people in the population was analysed, a country-characteristic pattern emerged. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-090501005 A |
| Classmark | TY: G5: SE: BBA: 48: 74 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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