UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
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| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
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This document is being made available by the Population Information
Network (POPIN) Gopher of the United Nations Population Division,
Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis,
in collaboration with the European Association for Population
Studies and the IUSSP. For further information please contact
Professor G.C. Blangiardo, Local Organizer, EAPS Conference, Milan,
University of Milan, Istituto di Statistica, V. Visconti di Modrone
21, Milan, Italy.
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EUROPEAN POPULATION CONFERENCE
CONGRES EUROPEEN DE DEMOGRAPHE
Milano, 4-8 settembre 1995
Plenary IV
New forms of social organization and interpersonal
relationships in ageing societies
by Giovanni B. Sgritta
1. Premise
®Any theory of population ... that overlooks cultural
phenomena is very likely to be deficient¯, writes K. Davis [1].
The most basic characteristic of a population always presupposes a
specific social order: a large number of rules and social norms,
certain values, certain types of family, a system of social
relations, not to mention the expectations and rights which
individual, families, and groups exercise over the available
resources.
Demographic ageing is a typical example. The decline in
fertility and the lower death rate over the whole life span are
virtually the most important data to explain this phenomenon.
However, these data are necessary but insufficient, just as they
would be insufficient to understand the causes and effects of any
other aspects of the demographic change. The examination of the
demographic parameters of ageing is only the premise for a more
general analysis which extends to the changes in customs and life-
styles which have caused that transformation, to the
challenges which the change in the demographic patterns impose on
society, its policy choices, its economy and its culture; but also
to the consequences which the political and social solutions to
these challenges will produce in the demographic behaviour of
individuals and families in the near future.
In this paper, only two of the many aspects of the problem of
population ageing will be considered. One at the macro level,
regarding intergenerational relationships and the ways in which
public policies have reacted to the changes in these relations.
The other will examine, at micro level, the effects that ageing has
had and, presumably, will continue to have on the family and on the
relationships within it. The geo- political area examined is that
of the European countries and in a wider context that of the
western nations.
2. Ageing societies and generational relationships
The essential aspects of demographic ageing can be summed up
as an extreme rarefaction of the events that take place at the
entry and exit points of the natural movement of the population;
thus, birth and death. The decline in fertility and the lower
death rate in old age represent the canonical elements of the
®great demographic shift¯ that has taken place in Europe and in all
western countries from the second half of the 1960s.
From then on, fertility first came to a halt and then fell
somewhat below the threshold which ensures the stationarity of the
population and its renewal from generation to generation. At the
other extreme, there had been a continuous and substantial
increase in the probability of survival which is reflected in a
lengthening of the average life-span. It becomes clear that, in
the absence of immigration, the classes of age which ®remain¯ in
the population will be made up more and more of the elderly and
less and less of the young. The population is ageing.
On the one hand, the population of over 60 year-olds of the
countries of the European Union, which was just over 46 million in
1960, has increased by around 48 per cent in just thirty years: 69
million in 1992. That of over 80 year-olds has risen in the same
period from 5 to 12 million with a percentage rise of 140 per cent.
On the other, the younger age groups are decreasing both as a total
and in relative terms. In 1960, in the countries of the European
Union the young aged between 0-19 were 32 per cent of the
population; in 1992, they are 25 per cent with a sharp fall of
seven percentage points.
Forecasts offer even more eloquent indications. According to
a scenario drawn up by Eurostat [2], in 2020 the group of over 60
year-olds should grow to 88 million (26 per cent of the
population of the Twelve), that of the over 80 year-olds to 17
million (5 per cent of the total) and that of the young under 19
years of age fall to 66 million (20 per cent of the total). In
these conditions (presuming the absence of external contributions
via immigration), the decline in the population is a foregone
conclusion.
However, the immediate consequences of the recent
demographic shift do not regard the numerical decline in the
population. The population of the European Union, as forecast by
Eurostat and the UN, should remain more or less stable over the
next twenty-five years [3]. The real problem is the change in its
composition. Population ageing modifies the relative weights of
the classes of age within the population. Since there are not mere
numerical quantities, but ®social entities¯ with rights,
privileges, opportunities and consolidated interests, it follows
that an appreciable variation in their relative weights is
destined to reflect - more or less proportionally - on the system
of rules which guarantees those rights and those interests, which
defines relationships within the family and the possibility to act,
to exchange, to take part in political life.
In the long run, the demographic shift alters the
equilibrium between the system of population and that of society.
The rules which were introduced with reference to a previous
demographic patterns characterized by specific internal power
relationships will become more and more incongruous in the new
demographic pattern; and could result in - as F. T. Denton and B.
G. Spencer maintain - social and political tensions and in short ®a
collective reconsideration of the rules and criteria for allocating
the national output among groups at different stages of the life
course¯ [4].
This ®asymmetry¯ between the demographic system and the
social system is precisely what has taken place in the past thirty
years. Briefly, demographic ageing has produced a profound
imbalance between the distribution of the ages and the symbolic and
legislative norms which up till then regulated the relations
between the age groups; and in consequence has threatened the
entire cultural, economic and juridical order on which these norms
are based.
In order to understand how things really are we must
change out tune. Instead of age we must think about generations,
exchange quantity for quality, the calendar for socio- historical
experience. Age is an arithmetical measurement, generation a
socio- historical concept. What counts from this point of view is
not the biological age but the when, the how and the where one
lives ones youth, ones maturity, one old age. Different
generations have different experiences, different opportunities and
relationships, they have on the whole a different
®citizenship¯ for the mere fact of being born, having studied,
married, begotten children, worked and retired from work in one
epoch instead of another. As K. Mannheim wrote: ®Were it not for
the existence of social interaction between human beings - were
there no definable social structure, no history based on a
particular sort of continuity, the generation would not exist as a
social location phenomenon; there would merely be birth, ageing,
and death¯ [5].
At this point it is easy to understand the correspondence
between demographic ageing and the relationships between
generations, just as it is easy to understand how new forms of
social organizations and new interpersonal relationships can
originate from this. A particular role is played, in this
respect, by the existing mechanisms of resources allocation, namely
the system of the ®social division of welfare¯: the family, the
fiscal system, the system of social security, and in general the
modes and procedures whereby the collective wealth is divided up
among the institutions and generations of society.
Why? In the first place, because age today is an
important criterion determining the public allocation of
resources, the bulk of transfer programmes is age-targeted, and any
reshuffling of demographic weights within the age pyramid will
inevitably influence the system of rules governing relations
between generations. Further, if these programmes have been
designed with an eye to a growing population, the transition to a
demographic regime characterized by a declining fertility and a
prolonging of life expectancy places at risk the correspondence
between the population system and the system of society.
Demographic change alters the balance of forces among the age
groups, and hence the scope of their rights and demands with regard
to the collective wealth.
Ronald Lee describes this process in terms of life-cycle
patterns of earning and consumption. ®[A]ge-patterns of
intergenerational transfers are repeated generation after
generation, and we may view them as a means for individuals to
smooth their own consumption streams through intertemporal
transfers to themselves. In this sense, the consumption needs and
labour efforts of the different age-groups in a population at any
instant are a kind or surrogate for those same needs and efforts
over the individual life-cycle. When the population is
stationary, the correspondence is exact¯ [6].
When the demographic picture changes and the population is
either growing or declining, the situation changes. In this case,
®the correspondence is systematically distorted, and this
distortion affects the terms on which individual can effectively
transfer resources inter-temporally to themselves by engaging in
contemporaneous transfers with other age-groups ... [T]he effects
of the distortion are summarized by the implicit rate of return to
all transfers ... and is well known for pay-as-you-go pension
systems¯ [7].
According to Lee, this is true in particular ®if fertility is
below replacement ... then a worker actually pays to support more
persons-years of elderly retirement than he/she will receive in
turn¯ [8]. However, even the mortality rate, which is often
overlooked in this type of study, affects the balance of costs and
benefits. If mortality decreases, in fact, it is certain that
®each individual will spend more time in retirement; workers are
paying more to themselves, and earning an implicit rate of return
on their contributions that is actually slightly higher than in a
comparable population with higher mortality¯. Thus, in
conclusion, ®over the life-cycle, individuals in a lower mortality
regime will consume more, whereas those in a lower fertility regime
will perhaps consume less .... Politically, morally, and
economically, the situation is quite different¯ [9].
In the European demographic scenario, these two tendencies
have appeared at different times during the past fifty years,
producing effects which when added together have come into a
®collision course¯ with the system of rules which regulated the
distribution of resources between those who work and those who have
retired. In the brief span of a generation,
intergenerational transfers have changed their target and the
direction is now oriented upwards, from younger to older. This
change of course in the flow of transfers between young and old
would not, however, have been possible without the appearance of
certain peripheral conditions which have little or nothing to do
with demography. One concerns the changes in the family, the other
regards the actions of public policies in the welfare state and is
largely responsive for the changes that have taken place in the
behaviour of families.
3. Exchanges: family ethic and welfare provisions
With the advent of the Welfare State, the classic
uncertainties of life - such as unemployment, injuries, illness,
old age, etc. - have been covered more and more by interventions in
the form of insurance and/or welfare guarantees. Already in the
latter post-war period in most of the Western countries, and
especially in the European countries, the State increased its
decisional power and its intervention in the social sphere. This
increased public presence derived from a number of factors. Some
were essentially political; others responded to socio-economic
changes typical of the distinction between individual income and
family income, and last but not least the loosening of the bonds of
mutual support in the family, kinship and the community as a result
of urbanisation and migration.
The expansion of the intervention of the State into areas
which in the past were autonomously run by the family shifts the
boundaries between public and private. The distinction between
state solidarity and family solidarity becomes uncertain and there
is a growth of relationships and circumstances that do not fall
completely either within the public sphere or within the private
one. State and family merge into one another.
Accordingly, the family ethic changes. The family
continues to accomplish a broad series of tasks of care and
maintenance of its members, but there is no doubt that important
functions have been transferred to the Welfare State in the last
few decades. This applies, in particular, to the duties of
children toward elderly parents. In the traditional family, as J.
Coleman points out, ®mutual dependence between generations ...
consisted principally of two stages: ... Children depend on their
adult parents to provide nurturing and education ... Parents, in
their old age ... depends on their adult children¯. This mutual
dependence ®has curtailed, however, by the rise of pension fund and
retirement insurance¯10.
Other moral and legal principles have, indeed, replaced the
traditional exchange, which was based on reciprocity and the
redistribution from one generation to another, but the nature of
human exchanges has been definitely altered nonetheless. The bond
between donors and receivers is becoming increasingly more generic
and impersonal, and is losing the character of a moral transaction
that forges and maintains personal relationships between
individuals and groups. Most importantly, the essential nature of
these relations is changing. They no longer rest on the duty
commanded by family descent and the bonds of kinship, but on the
mutual co-operation established among generations: between
anonymous young and anonymous elderly rather than between parents
and their own children as in the past.
4. Conflicting interests: the value of children
The economic significance of procreation changes
radically. Parents continue to produce children but in ever fewer
numbers, and for reasons that are essentially non- economic. ®If
children are no longer of value to support one in one's old age -as
J. Coleman observes - their upbringing and education is no longer
an investment in one's future¯ [11]. The adoption of pensions has
broken the personal ties between parents and
children. The costs that families have to bear are no longer
counterbalanced by the future support that children ensure to their
parents in their old age. Social security schemes provide a
solution to this problem.
Families continue to bear the costs of the maintenance of
their offspring, with financial burdens increasing in parallel with
the need to ensure them an adequate education level. But they
receive no return for these burdens; at most burdens and expenses
produce respect and affection. Children are still a profitable
investment in our society [12]. The question is: ®Who receives the
return? Necessarily the community, on the one hand and, on the
other, the child himself when he grows up. There is no way that
the parent can appropriate the child's earnings¯ [13]. For the
family, the value of children shifts from the sphere of utility to
the affective, sentimental sphere [14], whereas for society as a
whole, the economic importance of procreation remains unaltered.
Indeed, it is even growing [15].
The removal of the responsibility of maintaining their own
elderly from the family modifies the balance sheet between the
interests of parents and the interests of the broader social order.
The interest of the family in the children has been ®replaced by
each individual's interest in his own future or a couple's interest
in their joint future¯ [16]. The point is that the spread of
national systems of social security lead to low fertility, but are
unable to offer a solution to the problem of intergenerational
solidarity. On the contrary, the fact of having socialised old-age
support and of having delegated instead the responsibility of
child-raising to the private sphere exacerbates the terms of the
problems. The mere fact that society delegates the care of the new
generations almost exclusively to the family and, on the other
hand, itself shoulders the burden of maintaining the elderly raises
problems that were absolutely unimaginable in the past.
While the costs sustained by the family shrink in
proportion to the decrease in the number of progeny, those born by
society increase in proportion to the rate of ageing of the
population. But since the costs for maintaining the elderly fall
on social security and not on families, a decline in the fertility
rate brings about with time a considerable increase in
economic-social ®externalities¯. As S. Preston notes, ®an ageing
population finds it more difficult to maintain a certain level of
support for elderly persons because the ratio of older to younger
people and hence of transfer recipients to transfer donors rises¯
[17]. The sober Malthusian virtues of the family become a general
canker on the community when seen from the stand-point of society
at large.
5. The ®demographic¯ division of welfare
Demographic and family change do not take place in a void but
within a framework of principles, economic conditions, and
political choices which interact with and influence profoundly the
emergence and the consequences of reproductive behaviour.
What role have policies of public resources allocation played
in this process? Have they anticipated the consequences of the
demographic shift or have they just sought solutions when it
already affected dramatically the welfare state and its rules?
What has been the result in terms of equity between generations?
Policies adopted by various European countries are
certainly not homogeneous. However, certain recurrent tendencies
can be noted. From the post-war period to date these policies
would seem to have followed two different paths that are closely
linked to the main demographic patterns. The first concerns the
initial decades of the post-war period, its characteristics being
high fertility and the increase in public intervention programmes.
The second goes from the late 60s to the present and is
characterised by a progressive decrease of births as well as by a
parallel decrease of socio-political programmes addressed to
families and the young. This is obviously a simplification [18].
From the end of World War II up to the end of the 60s, the
expansion of the community services has been a constant factor of
policies adopted in most of the European countries. It was then
commonly expected that in the absence of family solidarity the
responsibility for satisfying social needs would shift to the
public sector. Even though this forecast has not always resulted
in the relevant intervention programmes, there is no doubt that
provisions adopted in the first decades of the post-war period bear
witness to a willingness to transfer responsibilities from the
basic structures of family and kinship to the Welfare State. As a
recent report of the U.N. Secretariat of the Economic
Commission for Europe acknowledges, ®The 1960s were marked by two
major developments in most of the market economies ... One was the
rapid expansion of their public sector, along with
exceptionally rapid growth of their social expenditures. A second
involved marked slow- down in population growth, along with
significant accelerations in aging¯ [19].
Until the late sixties or a little later, State spending on
family benefits, family health services and education increases
steadily in proportion to GNP20. This increase in State spending
is due only in part to the demographic situation of the period; it
was mostly the result of the ®changes in generosity of real benefit
or service quality¯ [21]. As a matter of fact, an
analysis of spending programmes, levels of taxation and tax
exemption has recorded ®a comparable erection of youth states in
the earlier post-war years in most developed nations¯ [22].
The characteristics of the following period are different.
Starting from the mid 70s (the first oil shock and the following
recession) a process of reduction in welfare policies has begun.
The reasons for this change are ascribable, at least in part, to
the disappearance of the conditions that in the previous years made
it possible to adopt a complex package of interventions both in the
sphere of economic policy and in the social one. However, changes
have occurred with regard to values too. This period has actually
been characterised, as R. Lesthaeghe and G. Moors point out, by a
®stronger defence of the individual's economic status and a reduced
attachment to the dogmas of income and resources redistribution¯
[23]. Meanwhile, the tendency towards the decline of births has
increased and the first signs heralding the ageing of the
population have become evident. Governments are
increasingly disposed to devote more attention to this problem if
only for mere electoral interest.
Given these conditions, it is no wonder that starting from
that period the rate of increase of public and social spending was
sharply reduced. According to the beforementioned report of the UN
Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe the
unweighted average share of public expenditure for all countries
®rose by 0.73 percentage points a year in 1960-1965 and 0.67 points
in 1965-1970¯. This annual rate of increase doubled to 1.35 points
in 1970-1975, while ®[b]etween 1975 and 1980 the average annual
increase in the share of general government
expenditure in GDP slowed down to 0.53 percentage points¯ [24].
Social spending in both periods was the most significant component
of the total variation in public spending. In the countries of
western Europe, the share of social spending in general government
expenditure rose from an average figure of 49.9 per cent in 1960 to
57.4 per cent in 1970 and to 60 per cent and over in 1970, then
falling to 58 per cent in 1981. Taking the countries of North
America as a whole it rises instead from 40 per cent in 1960 to
54.5 per cent in 1974 and remains more or less at the same figure
at the beginning of the 1980s [25].
What is surprising instead is the fact that the decline of
social schemes affects in different measures the different age-
groups of the population as well as the different sectors of
intervention. The general impression is that, beginning from the
middle of the 1970s and in partial synchronization with the ageing
process of population, there has been a substantial change in
course where social policies are concerned. As D. Thomson notes,
starting from that date in most of the western countries ®the rules
of the exchange between generations have been rewritten ... The
"welfare state for youth" has been remoulded into a "welfare state
for the ageing"¯ [26]. In more explicit terms, ®[a]
redesigning of the welfare state in step with its own ageing
interests had dominated our social, political, economic, fiscal,
legal and other policies during the 1970s and 1980s¯ [27].
Between 1975 and 1981, real social expenditure increases at
a somewhat lower average annual rate to that of the preceding
period (3.8 per cent against 7.6 per cent); correlatively, the part
due to demographic variables augments (from less than 20 per cent
in the period 1960-75 to 30 per cent in the period 1975-80 [28]),
although its weight remains in any case inferior to that
attributable to political choices (i.e., average benefit levels and
changes in programmes coverage). The connection between social
spending and political trends is particularly noticeable in certain
sectors of intervention. Between 1975 and 1981, for eleven western
countries for which data for the whole period are available, the
real expenditure growth on health is 3.7 per cent; more than two
thirds of this increase was due to improvements on real benefits
and only a small component (0.9%) to demographic factors. The same
is also true in the pensions sector which is also extensively
conditioned by demographic changes: between 1975 and 1981 the real
expenditure growth shows an average increase of 5.7 per cent, but
also in this case, as in the case of
expenditures on health, increased benefits were the main cause of
the growth, while the part due to demographic variables accounts
for nearly one third of the overall growth over the whole period
[29].
The main consequences of these socio- political choices is a
significant change in the allocation of public resources to the
different components of the population: the young and the elderly.
An Oecd's report offers some notable insight in this regard.
Assuming per capita social spending for children (0-14) as 100,
then spending on the elderly (65 and over) is 316 in the Federal
Republic of Germany, 380 in Italy, 234 in Sweden, and 213 in the
United Kingdom30. The experts that co-operated at the Luxembourg
Income Study concluded that ®about half of all public transfers..
go to elderly families, though only about 15% of the population
reside in these families¯ [31].
An analysis of trends in public spending in the ten most
industrialised countries in the Oecd led to the conclusion that,
even in the most generous cases, family benefits are much less
important than any other programme of intervention. Aid to
families with children (family benefits spending, including both
universal and income-tested programs, per person aged 15 or
younger) constitutes only a limited quota in per capita terms of
®direct spending¯ for the elderly (on old age, survivors, and
disability transfers per person aged 65 and older). In the mid-
80s, the incidence of the former on the latter was 21.1 per cent in
the United Kingdom, around 10 per cent in France, Australia, the
Netherlands, Japan, and Sweden, whereas it varies from 3 to 6 per
cent in Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and the
United States.
Although these figures should be viewed as largely
indicative and therefore interpreted cautiously, they do ®capture
the dimensions of the differences in the per capita public
resources flowing to the elderly and the young..¯, as M. O'Higgins
maintains at the end of a scrupulous analysis of information on
spending trends from 1960 onward [32]. On the other hand these
data reflects a reality which has by now been amply overtaken.
Since then the level of ageing of the population has considerably
increased. Even if one acknowledges that there will be a halt in
the decline in fertility or even a recovery in the next few years
it is probable that the discrepancy between resources allocated to
the elderly and those allocated to the young and to families is
destined to grow after the turn of the century, when a significant
acceleration in the aging process will occur at the expense of the
population of working age.
If one considers that the ageing of the population is not the
only reason for the growth in the discrepancy of spending on behalf
of the elderly and the young (in the 70's and 80's
political choices inflated expenditure targeted at the elderly by
the concession of numerous privileges, especially in the pensions
sector), it is probable that the position of advantage of the
elderly over the young will be a difficult trend to reverse. ®To
the extend that the cost to society of an older person is a
multiple of that for either a child (2-3 times) or an adult in the
central ages (possible as much as 7-8 times according to some
estimates), oncoming changes in age distribution will have
profound effects on the levels and structure of social expenditure
commitments¯ [33].
6. The social (ri-)production of poverty
Up until the end of the 1970s research on poverty and the
life cycle showed without exception that the quality of life was
inversely correlated to age. The great majority of workers
experienced a process of downward mobility as their working
capacity declined and their consumption exceeded their income.
More recent research shows a very different picture. They
indicate that the growth of the average economic well- being of the
elderly in the past two decades is an accepted fact in almost all
the developed countries. For example, a recent study
referring to the United States shows that in 1991 the purchasing
power of households with a head aged 65 and older had grown by more
than 40 per cent since 1971 [34]. Much of the rapid increase of
income among the elderly is due to the growth of social
security cash-transfers allocated to the elderly and to a lesser
extent to the increase of noncash benefits [35]. In fact, as D.
Holz-Eakin and T. Smeeding observe ®it is clear that transfers, on
average, increase economic inequality¯ [36].
On the contrary, in the same interval child poverty rates
have proportionally augmented. The rise in the poverty risk of the
child population is probably the result of the relative lag of
economic support measures aimed at families with children compared
with those targeting the elderly. The sparse data available seem
to confirm this hypothesis. S. Danziger and J. Stern show, for
example, that between 1973 and 1980 the child poverty rate rises
from 14.2 per cent to 17.9 per cent with an average for the period
of 15.9 per cent. In the eight following years, furthermore, the
poverty level initially rises (21.8 per cent in 1983) and then
declines a few percentage points in 1988, after which it remains on
average 4.4 per cent higher than in the eight preceding years [37].
A general overview by G. Cornia shows that, besides in the United
States, between 1975 and 1985 the poverty rates for
children also rose in Germany (from 7.4 to 8.9 per cent), in
Hungary (from 17.1 to 20 per cent), in the United Kingdom (from 9
to 18 per cent), and in Canada (from 16.9 to 17 per cent) [38].
According to the Luxembourg Income Study in four out of seven
countries the poverty rate of the youngest age group is higher than
that of the over-75 group, and in five out of seven it is higher
than that for the 65-74 age group. In Norway, for example, poverty
strikes young people three times more frequently than the very old.
In Canada the poverty level for youth is about double that for
over-65s. In Sweden poverty of the elderly has been practically
abolished, but relatively high poverty rates are still encountered
in the youngest age groups [39].
More alarming data is provided by recent studies carried out
in the United States. According to a report published in March
1991 by the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project,
®Today, one of every eight children in the United States under the
age of twelve suffers from hunger, and one child in every four is
either hungry or lives in a household that
experienced hunger during the year. That adds up to 5.5 million
hungry children and another 6 million at risk of hunger¯40.
Obviously, the condition of the children depends on that of the
families, therefore at the base of this phenomenon lies the poverty
of the parents and above all the collapse of the nation's support
system for those living in poverty or close to it in the 1980's.
Recently, M. Wright Edelman, President of the Children's
Defense Fund, attempted to evaluate the effects of the economic and
social policies of the past decades on the living conditions of
young families with children. The results show that ®[y]oung
families with children - those headed by persons under the age of
thirty - have been devastated since 1973 by a cycle of falling
income, increasing family disintegration, and rising poverty ....
The median annual earnings of head of young families with children
fell a staggering 44 per cent from 1973 to 1990. In other words,
in the span of less than a generation this nation nearly halved the
earnings of young household heads with children¯. These and other
negative records leave little room for illusions or for hope: ®One
in four white children in young families in now poor. One in five
children in young married-couple families is now poor. And one in
three children in families headed by a young high school graduate
is now poor ... And poverty has grown most rapidly among young
families with only one child¯ [41].
Consequences include more homelessness, more low birthweight
births, more infant deaths, more child disability, more crime, more
violence, more teen pregnancy, and above all - as has already been
said - the spectre of hunger has appeared in the most
®advanced¯ nation of the western world.
The situation in the United States is particularly serious
but not at all exceptional in the developed countries. The
situation is not so very different, given the due proportions, in
the United Kingdom and in Italy, above all in the regions of the
®Mezzogiorno¯ (Southern Italy). According to a recent report of
the Commission on Social Justice, in the United Kingdom,
®[f]amilies with children have suffered worst, particularly
compared with couples with two earners and no children. In 1979,
one in ten children was living in low- income families; today,
poverty hits one in three¯ [42]. As far as Italy is concerned, a
study carried out by the writer on official data for 1993 found
high children poverty rates mainly in large families: families with
five or more members, i.e., with normally three or more dependent
children, account for 6.9 per cent of Italian families, but more
than twice the number of poor families. Those with six or more
members account for 2.1 per cent of all families, but nearly four
times the number of poor families. Poverty is in the first
instance localised in the South of Italy.
Only one third of all families but more than two thirds
(72.6%) of poor families live in these regions. The figures are
eloquent. Poverty hits 20.5 per cent of children in the South (11
per cent at national level) and 10.1 per cent of the elderly over
65 (5.6 per cent at national level).
In Italy, in 1993, out of a total of 3,962,000 poor
959,000 or about one-fourth are children (0-14 years old); of these
9 per cent live in the North, 6 per cent in the Central regions,
and 85 per cent in the South. Thus the family regulates poverty.
Poverty in the South is a family predicament, i.e., that being poor
is a kind of ®perverse effect¯ of family solidarity, because the
poor person lives in a large family in which the precarious
economic conditions are severally shared [43].
These data, and probably many others if one takes into
consideration the countries of the Mediterranean basin and those of
Eastern Europe, to a certain extent contradict T. Smeeding's
conclusions that the United States is the only country with ®double
digit poverty rates¯ (®US children have by far the highest poverty
rate of any group, in any nation, at any time¯ [44]). It is true
that the United States is the only country without some form of a
universal child allowance, but this does not explain why in all the
other countries taken into consideration by T. Smeeding (with the
exception of Germany) the child poverty rates are always higher
than those of the elderly (U.S.: 20.4% vs. 10.9%; Canada: 9.3% vs.
2.2%; Australia: 9.0% vs. 4.0%; Germany: 2.8% vs. 3.8%; France:
4.6% vs. 0.7%; U.K.: 7.4% vs.1.0%); nor does it explain why the
role of tax and public transfers proves itself to be quite
efficient in removing elderly families from poverty but achieves
very limited results in the case of children in poverty [45].
7. Generational iniquity: conflicting views
The importance of these data in order to analyse the
relations between the generations is obvious. The combined effects
of the demographic shift (population aging) and of the decisions of
governments beginning from the first oil shock resulted in a
complicated distribution problem. Childhood had been the ®victim¯
of this change, which had led to a greater concentration of
resources in the hands of the older age groups, while it has let to
a relative impoverishment of that part of society - children and
young people - which is absent from the social contract.
Complex arguments circulate around the possible causes of a
conflict between generations. The ®stage¯ of the commentators is
divided between apocalyptics and conservatives. The first consider
the course of the social state of social-democratic stamp to be if
not finished at least compromised, and call for a
®second- generation welfare state¯. J. O'Neill position is
typical: ®In the last fifty years the welfare state has functioned
to spread income over the life cycle of citizens who might not have
had the foresight to do this for themselves, and it has set up the
expectation that every generation would at a later age benefit from
the contribution it made when younger to its
contemporary elders. However, there is evidence that this
exercise in intergenerational reciprocity has been violated ...
[T]he welfare state ... is now the principal source of the
well-being of the contemporary elderly while extending far fewer
benefits to contemporary youth¯ [46].
D. Thomson is even more radical in his criticisms of the
®first generation¯ welfare state. In line with O'Neill's
argument, Thomson maintains that, whereas ®the first welfare
generation lived in states which invested heavily in the future,
both in terms of capital and of human stock .... [t]he young adult
of the late twentieth century live in societies of very much lower
long term investment¯ [47]. In synchrony with the ageing of the
population, the logic itself of the welfare state has therefore
®aged¯ too: ®A redesigning of the welfare state in step with its
own ageing interests has dominated our social, political,
economic, fiscal, legal and other policies during the 1970s and
1980s¯ [48].
The positions of the opposing side are more variegated and
reflect different disciplinary approaches. N. Daniels goes so far
as to deny that the problem exists at all: ®Whereas differential
treatment by race and sex always generates inequalities between
persons, differential treatment by age does not necessarily
generate inequalities¯. The conclusion of his thesis is already
implicit in the premises: ®If we treat the young one way and the
old another, then over time, each person is treated both ways. The
advantages (or disadvantages) of consistent differential treatment
by age will equalize over time¯ [49]. This thesis deserves a brief
comment. In reality, both policies and the demographic patterns
change with time. For each generation, the starting conditions do
not coincide with the conditions at the end of the life course; and
this is all the more true, the more intense the pace of social
change and the more profound the variation intervening in the
population structure. In
generational terms, age is not different from sex and race. It is
given to no individual to be able to change the epoch in which s/he
is born. And it is this epoch which establishes the
conditions in which s/he must live, the rules of the society in
which s/he grows, the institutions to which s/he must relate, and
the advantages and disadvantages in store for her/him from the
choices and behaviours of generations preceding her/him50.
Remaining on this front, a more distinct position is taken by
A. Walker. He concedes that welfare state is currently the subject
of renegotiation and modification in the majority of western
societies, but argues that these processes have little or nothing
to do with intergenerational conflict. According to him, the link
between demographics and policy changes has been
artificially amplified in order ®to divert attention from the real
ideological imperative behind policy¯, that is ®to legitimate
policies aimed at restructuring the welfare state¯ [51]. In his
view, ®it is not concern about justice between age cohorts that
motivates intergenerational-equity protagonists but the fiscal
implication of aging¯ [52]. In other words, ®it is merely a
politically expedient use of demographic change¯ on the part of
some governments (notably the most market-oriented welfare states:
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States), to
dismantle their welfare provisions.
A study by E. R. Kingson et al. commissioned by the
Gerontological Society of America with the intention of
challenging the thesis of intergenerational conflict takes a not
dissimilar view. This study offers an interesting summary of the
whole range of problems resulting from demographic ageing. The
arguments of E. R. Kingson and associates basically repeat A.
Walker's conclusions, and that is that the thesis of the
intergenerational conflict is just ®a convenient rationale for a
political ideology that opposes virtually all public efforts
directed at meeting family and individual needs¯ [53]. The
interests of thee generations are not separate but interdependent:
®by protecting older family members against loss of income due to
retirement, Social Security benefits accrue primarily to the young¯
[54]; and social security ®opens up employment
opportunities for younger workers by encouraging older ones to
retire in exchange for a pension¯ [55].
Another point that this study has in common with A.
Walker's thesis is the emphasis placed on the diversity or
heterogeneity of the old. While it is true that the economic
conditions of the elderly have greatly improved in these last
decades, nonetheless ®we as a society must also recognize that
millions of older people continue to live in or near poverty and
continue to be afflicted with debilitating chronic illnesses ...¯
[56]. Population ageing is both a success story and a challenge.
The size of elderly people will continue to increase; the
prolonging of life expectancy will increase pension costs, just as
the number of elderly requiring long-term care; inevitably the
costs for society are going to grow, since retirees of the future
will receive benefits for a longer period of time than previous
cohorts. In fact, all available research shows that social
security transfers already make up the main components of income of
retirees.
The Gerontological Society of America's report does not in
principle dispute the thesis of intergenerational iniquity. But it
considers mistaken the premise that ®the relative needs of children
and the elderly for public expenditures are identical and that
equal expenditures are the equivalent of social justice¯ [57].
Different needs require different responses; to give to the elderly
the same as is given to the other classes of the
population would be an obvious injustice. According to this
thesis, social policies cannot ignore the credits accumulated by
the past generations; furthermore, it must be remembered that part
of what is spent on the elderly is to be counted as a return on
their previous investments in younger generations.
8. Equity or conflict?
As is often the case in the field of the social sciences, t
is very difficult to make a precise division between right and
wrong. Each of these positions contains some plausible
observations and others which can be disputed. A. Walker is right
when he foresees, behind the thesis of the intergenerational
conflict, the risk that in the end only the victim of a radical
revision of the welfare state will remain on the ®battle field¯;
but this does not mean that the thesis of the conflict is
absolutely without foundation. The two ideas are perfectly
compatible. E. Kingson et al are right when they point out that
the elderly are a heterogeneous group, that many of them live in
poverty, that they must be given - now - the just recompense for
what they have done for the well-being of the younger generations.
But what about tomorrow's elderly?
There are two sides to the generational question. It
consists, on the one hand, of the unequal sharing of resources
between age- groups - in space; and on the other hand between
successive cohorts - in time. In other words, the asymmetric
distribution of available resources has a double consequence: it
feeds a horizontal conflict between today's youth and today's
elders; and, in the future, what D. Thomson has defined ®temporal
iniquity¯, that is to say, it leads to a different treatment of the
young with respect to future generations, but also of the elderly
of today in relation with the elderly of tomorrow.
As far as the first aspect is concerned, the argument made by
®generational equity¯ advocates can be summarised as follows: ®a)
In recent years there has been a growth of public resources
directed toward elderly members of the population resulting from
legislation to counter previous level of poverty among the aged,
and because of effective political lobbying. b) This has led to
substantial improvement in the economic status of the elderly and
in their access to health care. c) The elderly are becoming better
off as a group that the non- aged population, especially children;
and the proportion of [public] funds directed to the oldest age
group is increasing every year. d) At the same time the flow of
resources to children and other dependent populations has
decreased, proportionally. e) Thus, to continue the flow of
[public] resources to the elderly is inequitable, and will be the
source of intergenerational conflict¯ [58].
This is only one side of the coin, but even so it creates
serious problems where distributive justice is concerned. The
substantial increase in the elderly population coupled with the
generosity with which the welfare state provides for the needs of
the elderly inevitably takes away resources from other groups of
the population. The two largest areas of resources directed to the
elderly are in health spending and pensions. In 1991, in Europe,
health expenditure amounted on average to over 20 per cent of the
total social expenditure, and pension (old-age plus
survivors) to between 30 per cent (Portugal) and 56.9 per cent
(Greece) of total social spending. On the other hand, expenditure
for family allowances and unemployment benefits was very much
lower: a maximum of 10.6 per cent for the former (Ireland) and 17.9
per cent for the latter (Spain). In ratio to the GDP, expenditure
for pensions was on average around 8 per cent, that for
unemployment around 1 per cent, and that for family allowances
around 2 per cent. The conclusion of the Report of the European
Commission, which has provided these figures, is the following:
®One can reasonable conjecture that an evolution of this kind will
bring with it new problems of distributive justice between
generations, which apart from financial difficulties could also
engender politico-social conflict¯ [59].
This situation is arising in the midst of a severe
recessive crisis of the economy of the western world, during the
course of which unemployment has increased, the public debt has
risen, the incomes of families with children have diminished and
inequality has increased. A particularly serious problem, at least
in Europe, is that of the many young people who cannot find a job.
A report of the European Commission on employment observes that
®[t]he average rate of youth unemployment in the Community -of 21%
in May 1994 - remains double that of those over 25. In Italy, at
33%, and in Greece, at 23%, it was more than four times the adult
rate¯60. A strange coincidence: Greece and Italy have the highest
expenditure for old age pensions in ratio to the GDP (respectively
10.6 and 11.5 per cent in 1991) and the highest pension benefits in
relation to average net wages (107 per cent in Greece and 89 per
cent in Italy); but they are in the last places as far as concerns
unemployment benefits in ratio to the GDP (0.3 and 0.4 per cent)
and, in relation to wages, for expenditure on family allowances in
ratio to the GDP (0.3 and 0.8 per cent); finally - in cauda venenum
- they are among the few countries that do not provide for any
benefits for a young 18-year-old school leaver who is without
employment [61].
The other aspect of intergenerational inequity regards the
future. many of the theses that we have considered earlier lose
validity and credibility if we look at them from this point of
view. Equity between the age-groups is a different thing from
intergenerational equity. Although it is important, the gap that
exists today between young and old is only the symptom of an
inequality destined in all probability to explode ®tomorrow¯. Even
if we admit that the elderly have good reason to expect and obtain
a bigger slice of the cake, as E. R. Kingson and his associates
assert, how can we justify the fact that the elderly of tomorrow
will probably not be guaranteed the same level of
well-being as that guaranteed to the elderly of today?
The case of pensions is enlightening in order to
understand the role that policies and demography have played in the
change in intergenerational relations. The pension system of
modern society is based, as we know, on the ®generational pact¯.
This lies in the certainty of reciprocity in relations between
donors and recipients. D. Thomson sums it up: ®I make my surplus
income available to others today and I am happy to continue doing
so in the firm belief that, when I am in the same position as those
I am now helping, others will in turn make their surpluses
available to me in a comparable manner and amount. I require that
I be protected against future risk by participating in this way.
I am not simply handing over my surplus income to others in need at
this moment without expecting that I will be treated similarly in
time. I expect all to observe the same rules¯ [62].
All pay-as-you-go systems operate on this implicit rule;
employed individuals give up part of their current income to
existing pensioners on the understanding that they will become
similar beneficiaries during a future period of their own life
course. In order for this system to function without producing
injustice in the course of time, there must be an equilibrium
between payroll taxes and benefits, also taking into account what
is happening in the structure of the population. Above all, the
relations between the young and the elderly or between working and
retired people must be taken into account. Even a system which
starts in equilibrium could be affected if significant changes
occur in the demographic structure. In particular, any change in
the ratio of old people to the working population tends to have
immediate impacts on the financial situation of the programme, and
thus to create a deficit unless correctives are introduced.
In fact, the pension systems of the western countries have
felt the full impact of the changes that have taken place in the
demographic field. Originally, they derived considerable
advantages from a very much lower number of beneficiaries than of
workers, which could thus finance the programme (social security
payroll taxes) at very low cost; for some time, further advantages
derived from a reduced life expectancy of pensionable-age
beneficiaries, from relatively low unemployment figures and from
the early entry of large demographic groups in the labour market.
Today, the weight of the elderly in relation to the total has
almost triplicated. The average life expectancy has greatly
increased. The ratio between workers and retired people is greatly
unbalanced in favour of the latter. Groups of
ever-smaller size are appearing on the labour market, and, all
other things being equal, this will continue in the future as well.
What is more, these groups will tend to enter the labour market at
an increasingly later age as relatively more and more children are
educated for an ever-greater number of years.
Up to a point, therefore, the story of intergenerational
redistribution in these last decades has been written by
demography. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to believe that the
demographic factor is sufficient in itself to explain the events we
have described. The demographic shift would not have produced the
same results if it had not found a powerful ally in the political
decisions that were taken by governments during the same period.
This, and not the demographic change, is the crucial variable.
What I mean to say is that, from the mid- 70s to date
political choices have favoured and amplified the effects of
demographic changes, rather than oppose them. Policy- makers'
decisions did not go beyond merely following the life-cycle
evolution of the generation that benefited, in the first decades of
the post-war era, from the more favourable measures of social
protection provided by the welfare state. What measures? The
following are certainty some of the most important; facilitating,
often with the cooperation of the trade unions and employers, an
accelerated withdrawal from the labour force [63]; allowing reduced
pensionable ages to remain in force until very recently, despite
the considerable increase in the average life expectancy; the
concession of increases in benefits which were a function of the
inflation rate, e.g. adjustments based upon indexation
methods; the concession of fictive (imputed) rents; the linking of
pension transfers to wage trends rather than to the cost of living;
the calculation of pensions on the basis of transfers rather than
on payroll taxes, and so on.
By doing so, these choices have contributed to make the
welfare state's experience of the previous decades something
unrepeatable, a one-way phenomenon (if not a phenomenon ®una
semper¯) bound to last l'espace d'une g‚n‚ration and in any event
to end when those that contributed to create it and got the most
out of it disappear from the scene. The looming risk is that the
welfare system might disintegrate due to the joint impact of an
exceptional demographic dynamism and a political behaviour that,
with the benefit of hindsight, is not an exaggeration to define as
®unlimited irresponsibility¯ toward future generations. In a very
real sense, this is a tax on future generations, an unfair way to
transfer ®the unpaid bills of today onto someone else in the
future¯ [64].
Without necessarily agreeing with ®apocalyptic¯ positions, we
can observe that the political choices of the last decades have
been characterized by an extreme short- sightedness; that they have
given rise to ®externalities¯ which future generations (of young
and old) will pay in higher taxes, lower disposable income, fewer
services, fewer resources and less security. Already today we can
see the signs of this change of course in the reforms which most
countries have introduced or are about to introduce in order to
avoid the collapse of the pensions system in the next decades.
These reforms show quite clearly that political choices have
counted for more than demographic changes in the evolution of
intergenerational relations. Why? There is no other way to
explain how, in an anything but favourable demographic situation,
those reforms of the pensions system which were not even taken into
consideration ten or twenty years ago, are now considered
practicable.
The fact is that up till now governments have limited
themselves - following Bacon's maxim - to pursuing short-term
objectives, ®leaving the future to divine providence¯. For many
years political choices have been made which have profoundly
altered intergenerational relationships and which are bound to
weigh even more heavily in the years to come: partly because of the
intensification of population ageing, but due even more to the
maturing of the pension regimes created in the past. These choices
have acted as ®iniquity accelerators¯ between the
generations. A ®generational accounting¯ study undertaken at the
Bank of Italy concludes that ®unless major and quite painful steps
are taken and taken soon, future generations of Italians will be
forced to pay over their lifetimes four or more times the net taxes
expected to be collected from current generations¯ [65].
The impression is that a problem of a collective nature -the
relations between the generations - has been reduced, for mere
electoral interests and for political advantage, to a
non-cooperative game where the immediate interests of one
generation have been put before the future interests of all the
others. Short-term cyclical considerations have got the better of
more far-sighted views. The time horizon of public social choices
has been markedly shortened. The transfers system has adopted an
ever-rising social discount rate, thus implicitly assuming that
®possible costs and benefit ... are less important if they ... come
further in the future¯ [66].
If the task of policy-makers should be that of expressing an
intertemporal view of collective interests, it is all too easy to
be ironical about the degree of awareness about this task if one
considers the behaviours of the political class in the past
decades. Past (and present) governments seem rather to have
encouraged the plundering of the resources of the future
generation in order to please the present one. Many of the choices
made in the past are destined to weigh on the interests of the
future generations, putting at risk the preservation of that
intergenerational solidarity pact on which the whole edifice of the
welfare state rests. With all the consequences that are not
difficult to imagine:
1. first, that the promises of the social state will be
impossible to maintain, leading to a patent violation of the rules
of the game with the game already begun;
2. second, that events in these last decades have led to an
inequity in the relations between the generations which will be
difficult to eliminate or reduce; this because the shoulder of the
young of today and of those who will enter the labour market in
the next decades will have to bear the weight of maintaining ever
greater numbers of people of non-productive age, many more than
was ever the case for the past generations. That is to say, they
will pay more with the mathematical certainty of receiving less,
while up to now exactly the contrary has been true. With the not
insignificant burden that the assistance they will be called to
give to the elderly will not regard only the monetary aspects; it
will also regard, and perhaps more so, non-material help, that of
care and support, which ageing will throw on the narrow shoulders
of an ever smaller number of children;
3. third, that given these circumstances there is the concrete
risk that the system of transfers guaranteed in the past by the
welfare state is destined to collapse, or anyway - the more
optimistic view - to be replaced by financially more onerous
solutions for the participants, and thus be doubly unjust to those
who, for a part of their life, have already settled the account
of an ®unfulfilled promise¯
9. Changing family patterns
Western societies have decreed the separation between family
responsibility and public responsibility. While the economic
support of the old is entrusted almost entirely to the society, the
care and support of children is seen as ultimately a parental
responsibility. Indeed, it is often suggested that ®fertility in
developed countries is so low in part because society captures the
financial benefits of children while leaving parents to bear most
of the costs¯ [67].
Between the elderly and the young, however, there is an
important difference. The role of public policies is equally
determinant. But in the case of children external (albeit
anything but extraneous) factors intervene in their condition,
namely the family. Children do not work. They necessarily share
the economic status of the family to which they belong. Children
have no way of escaping the fate to which they are condemned by the
mere fact of being born into a family in particular economic
circumstances, unless an adequate policy comes to their aid. The
child's social condition, in other words, is subordinated to the
distribution of resources, positions, and opportunities within the
category of the adult parents.
It becomes clear, as S. G. Gould and J. L. Palmer argue, that
the economic and social status of children ®depends much less on
age per se than it does on other demographic characteristics such
as race and family composition and exposure to certain events such
as unemployment of a parent, divorce, illness, and death in the
family¯ [68]. This means that along with the macro aspects, we
must also examine the consequences that demographic ageing has on
the change in family relationships and on care activity within the
family. Thus, a new drama unfolds, with many points in common with
that of intergenerational relationships. The situation becomes
complicated and new processes and new actors arrive on the scene,
with results that are not always foreseeable, announcing new
challenges and new solutions for societies in the near future.
The main processes regard the changes in household and family
structure; the increase in the rate of female participation in the
labour market, and the change in the relations of mutual aid within
the family and kinship. Without fail, at the centre of these
developments, we find the figure of the woman.
10. Marital disruption and childbearing
I shall try to summarize the most important features of these
phenomena. The ageing process significantly influenced the number
of households and the number of persons per household. In this
respect the increase in the number of one-person households and the
decreasing proportion of households of five or more members
deserves attention. This trend toward smaller households,
moreover, is reinforced by the large number of one-parent
families. In Europe in the 1950s, single-person households made up
around 10 per cent of the total number of households; nowadays, in
many countries, this proportion is close on or over 30 per cent
[69]. It includes single people living alone, divorcees, married
people awaiting divorce or simply separated, widowers and in
particular widows. As for one-parent households, their number has
also grown to a considerable degree since the 1980s. In 1990-91,
according to Eurostat data, they were 20 per cent in Denmark, 16
per cent in the United Kingdom, 15.4 per cent in Germany, and
around 10-12 per cent in the other countries (with the exception of
Greece, Italy and Spain, where the figures are lower). ®The
percentage of this type of household where the mother has sole
responsibility is 85 per cent in all countries¯70.
Behind the growth of these new living arrangements lie
different circumstances. The phenomenon can be partly explained by
the decline in mortality, increased life- expectancy and the growth
in the number of elderly people; partly, it reflects instead major
changes in behaviour. In any event (although the phenomenon does
not regard all the developed countries to the same degree), no
other change has so significantly altered the
household structure as marital disruption. In most western
countries divorce rates have soared since the mid- 1960s. In a
number of European countries (Belgium, France, Switzerland) rates
have doubled, in others (England, Netherlands) they have risen
threefold. As for the United States, about half of all recent
marriages end in divorce. In fact, T. Castro Martin and L. Bumpass
have estimated that almost two-thirds of recent first marriages
would be likely to disrupt if current levels persist [71]. With
few exceptions, most of the western countries are destined to
approach, sooner or later, the situation of the United States.
According to F. Furstenberg and A. Cherlin, ®[e]ven though the
United States still outranks all other nations by a considerable
margin, the cross-national differentials are
diminishing ...¯ [72].
The most important effects of marital disruption regard
children. In the United States it has been calculated that, at
current rates, about half of today's young children ®will spend
some time in a single parent family, most as a consequence of
divorce, [and] the majority will remain in a mother-only family for
the remainder of their childhood¯ [73]. The National Survey of
Children, a representative sample of children that have been
followed from the mid-1970s to the present, indicates that ®well
over a third of the youth ... witnessed the breakup of their
parents' marriage before they reached the age of sixteen, and
another 10 per cent or so experienced life in a single-parent
family because their parents were unmarried or because of the death
of a parent¯ [74].
Indeed, added to the consequences of divorce are those of
births in informal, temporary, or casual unions: a phenomenon that
we still know too little about, but which in recent years has
certainly registered an even greater acceleration than that of
matrimonial disruption. In 1991, in the member states of the
European Union the proportion of births outside marriage accounted
for half of births in Sweden, for more than 40 per cent in
Denmark, was around 30 per cent in France and in the United
Kingdom, and was at any rate higher than 10 per cent in many other
countries (with exception of Italy and Greece) [75]. As for the
United States, nonmarital childbearing is becoming part of the life
experience of a significant proportion of women: ®Life table
estimates suggest that 17% of white women and 70% of black women
will have child while unmarried if recent levels persist¯ [76].
It is difficult to make forecasts in matters like this.
There are many intervening factors. Apart from economic reasons,
an important role is played by the shifts in value orientations and
the weakening of the normative constraints against the divorce and
the unmarried childbearing. According to the EurobaromŠtre inquiry
carried out in 1993 in the countries of the European Union, ®most
Europeans consider the family to be of fundamental value; over 96
per cent of those interviewed put it in the first place among those
aspects of life that are judged to be very important¯ [77]. As for
cohabitation, 19 per cent of the
interviewees approve of it, 13.8 per cent disapprove, and 63.3 per
cent prefer not to give an opinion (3.1 per cent did not reply);
the young, and unmarried people are distinctly more favourable to
cohabitation than the elderly and married people. Finally, the
opinion of 32.6 per cent was positive regarding the divorce of a
couple who were no longer on good terms and 29.8 per cent
expressed themselves positively on the remarriage of parents who
have children from a previous marriage [78].
The greater tolerance of the young towards new forms of
family life compared to the elderly is very important; it could
mean that we are facing a change in those basic value orientations
which have determined the ®second demographic transition¯. A
recent study carried out by R. Lesthaege e G. Moors in four
countries (Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands) did not
reach a definite conclusion in this regard but did, however, hint
at the possibility that we find ourselves on the threshold of a
significant ideational trend reversal. Their conclusion is that
®it is definitely too early to come up with such a prediction. At
present, all that can be said is that the ideational props that
have sustained the second demographic transition seem to have lost
their momentum during the 1980s.. [I]n the period 1981-1990, the
various cohorts ... moved slightly in the direction of stronger
familistic orientations¯ [79].
Whatever the case may be, it is a fact that the panorama of
various forms of family life will not present great surprises in
the near future. Smaller families, the growth of one-parent
families, the increase of recomposed families made up from parts of
divorced families; probably the convergence of most of the western
countries towards the level of marital disruption now found in the
United States and in the countries of Northern Europe; and above
all, the growth households consisting of elderly couples without
children or of elderly people living alone. In the last analysis,
®weaker¯ families, characterised by greater economic problems and
by greater difficulties in providing
autonomously for the care and maintenance of their dependent
members. In 2010-2020, the generations that in the 1970s gave the
green light to the decline in fertility and the increase in
divorces will be around 80 years old; that is, they will be of an
age where the needs of care and assistance become more pressing.
Some of them will have only one child to count on; some of them
will have a confused marital and family career behind them,
consisting of a series of experiences. Research shows that fathers
who have been through more than one marital experience usually
maintain scarce bonds with the children born from a previous union.
We know little or nothing instead about the long-term
consequences of such behaviour80. What moral obligations will the
children have towards their fathers? Will these fathers be able to
turn to their children in case of need? How will the relations of
solidarity between the generations change when family stories are
so fragmented? In fact, as Furstenberg and Cherlin observe,
®[f]amilies not only nurture and protect children, they also
distribute resources; and in so doing they create lasting
obligations ... [K]inship is a set of rules for deciding how
resources (emotional and material) are to be divided within and
across generations ... Remarriage certainly expands the potential
universe of kin, but does it also dilute the importance of each
kin?¯ [81].
11. ®Blaming the victims¯: women's virtues and public vices
As we were saying, the female question is central to all the
problems of the relationships between generations and the change in
the patterns of family life. The most significant aspects of the
centrality of the woman regard the exceptional growth in the levels
of scholarization and the correlated increase of the woman's
presence in the labour market. All the rest is just the
consequence of these two processes. The major
®revolution¯ of this century is still unfinished; even today
serious obstacles rise on the path of basic gender equality, which
in fact prevent or limit the individual self-determination of the
woman. Women's citizenship is partial and ®weak¯; many
disparities exist, between men and women, in the division of
domestic work, in the distribution of opportunities, in the defence
of social rights and in the practice of political
participation. None the less, the changes that have taken place in
the majority of western countries in recent years - in family
relationships, in interpersonal relations, in the field of
employment, in the organization of society, in the ties of mutual
help and in intergenerational relationships - are due to a great
extent to the changes in the female condition.
Although the rate has been different in each country, the
growth of female participation in paid employment has been
constant in the past decades and as time passes this presence will
probably grow stronger: because of the increase in the levels of
instruction which stimulates the woman to seek a pay-off of the
formative investments in employment; because of the need to fulfil
herself socially; in order to ensure a standard of living for the
family that would not be guaranteed by the single income of the
husband; both in order to obtain for herself that economic freedom
which, in the event of a divorce, acts as a kind of ®safety-net¯;
and because, with the decline in the birth-rate, the female work
force will become more and more indispensable for the economy of
the developed countries.
What are the links with the generational question? What
possible consequences will the further growth of female employment
have on the cost-benefit balance between the generations? It is
not easy to answer these questions. The interconnection of the
intervening factors is terribly complicated. It depends on the
future development of employment opportunities; which are very
uncertain. It depends on the way in which public policies will
respond to the changes in the family, and to the answers that these
policies will be able (or willing) to give to the ®double role¯ of
the woman, to the needs of children and to those of the elderly;
because there is no doubt that ®the state can influence family help
... by the way it organizes and provides services to individuals in
need and by assumptions it makes about the nature and availability
of such assistance in rationing care¯ [82]. It depends a great
deal on the way in which the relationship between the male and
female roles will change in the division of domestic work and in
caring activities; etc. And for the moment all this is enveloped
in the thickest of mists.
Remaining with our feet on the ground, what one can say is
that social policies have not up till now shown any particular
interest in overcoming the traditional, that is gendered, patterns
of caring. Within limits, these patterns can undergo slow
transformations. In part, this is what has happened. But at what
costs? With what consequences for intergenerational
relationships?
The most important result of women's attempts to reconcile
their own self- fulfilment and career aspirations with the
traditional reproductive and family roles has been the decline in
fertility. The reduction in the number of offspring, the
renunciation of a second and third child, have seemed to a growing
number of women the almost inevitable solution to the paralysis of
aid programmes for children and the family. Numerical
elimination, more than just symbolic [83], of childhood, has shown
itself to be an adequate means of escape from a situation that is
destined to weigh entirely on the woman. Accordingly, the
demographic and social value of the child's life decreases
inversely to the importance given to the lives of the adult members
of society.
In the western world, children have been ever more
®captured¯ in the game of a series of opposing choices: in
opposition to work, to a career, to consumption, to leisure time,
to the fulfilment of the individual's own ambitions. As J. Coleman
observes, the interest of the parents in the children has been
®replaced by each individual's interest in his own future or a
couple's interest in their joint future¯ [84]. ®Parenthood¯ is
ever less rewarding; men and especially women are increasingly
reluctant to make decisions which have long-term consequences and
hence limit the future freedom of choice.
The problem is social, however, and not individual or gender-
specific. The procreative choice takes place in the families, but
it is above all at the organizational and structural level of
society that responsibilities and solutions must be sought and
identified. It would thus be completely mistaken to identify the
®motor¯ of the present demographic dynamics in only the female part
of the population. It would mean the repetition of a historic
mistake which has often taken the form of ®blaming the victim¯.
While it is true that the widespread use of modern methods of
contraception has had the effect of ®privatizing the decision
whether or not to have children¯ [85], the burden of the choice has
usually fallen on the woman's shoulders.
Thus, the resolution to the problem of procreation has been
left up to two of society's weakest members: the woman and the
child, and the conflict created by their opposing interests. The
limitation of ®demographic privatization¯ is not so much that of
having saddled the woman with the demanding role of primus inter
pares in the reproductive decision, but rather that of having put
off the search for a collective solution to the problem of
intergenerational relationships; in fact, that is, of having thus
prevented it from taking on the significance and the
importance of a question of general interest. Lacking the
comprehensive adjustment of the social system to women's new
demands, their ®sacrosanct¯ claim to equal rights and
opportunities has been reflected in considerable demographic and
social unbalance. The inclusion and the recognition (even though
partial) of women's citizenship has had the (momentary?) result of
ousting children's interests from the political agenda; more or
less the effect that has been the result of the greater attention
that public policies have paid to the elderly. It is as if the
capacity of our systems to guarantee the participation and the
equality of its different members cannot exceed a certain limit;
beyond which exclusion mechanisms intervene to re- establish the
status quo ante; that is to say, the advantages and privileges of
one or more social groups over others.
12. Kin availability: present and future prospects
Another important process at micro level regards the
change in the web of kin relationships and mutual aid. In fact,
important consequences result from the variation in the fertility
and mortality rates, not only on the size of the age- groups, for
the social supports available to the different members of the
population, and especially to dependent individuals (children and
the elderly). In the past decade, the structure of dependency has
changed significantly; there has been a considerable shift from
youth to old-age dependency. Whereas in 1970, in the ECE region
(Western, Southern, Eastern Europe and North America) there were
more than 50 elderly persons (60 years and over) per 100 young
people (under 15), by 1990 this figure had increased to over 72.
Assuming that the total fertility rates in the ECE countries will
converge towards a replacement level, the United Nations
projections prospect that ®by 2020 the aged population would
outnumber the young population by 11 million and by the year 2025
by more than 30 million¯ [86]. The beforementioned ageing index
will vary accordingly: from 72.5 (1990) to 104 in 2020.
Of greater interest is the ratio between the dependent
population and that of working age (15-59 years), which bears the
economic and social costs of its maintenance. This ratio, a little
above 63 in 1985 (63 dependents per 100 persons of
working-age) should increase in 2025, also according to the
projections (medium variant) of the United Nations, by 20 per cent:
75 persons in dependent ages per 100 persons in working ages.
However, even the dependency ratio only provides an
approximate estimate of the real burden that is destined to weigh
on the working-age population. In order to obtain a more reliable
figure we should have to calculate the size of the population
actually available to give assistance and help to weaker
individuals.
Unfortunately, these data are not always available.
Studies carried out in Great Britain and Italy confirm that the
pool of informal carers is negatively related to the growth of the
elderly population [87]. In the restrictive hypothesis that this
pool of human resources is made up exclusively of unmarried women
aged between 45-59 who devote themselves to looking after their
parents (65 and over), in the Italian case it is shown that it
drops from 142 per 1000 elderly people in 1951 to 73 in 1981, while
the percentage of elderly people on the total rises from 9 to 13.2
per cent [88]. A more recent study by D. A. Wolf reaches different
conclusions, calculating the ®mother- daughter ratio¯, that is the
ratio of women 65 and older to women 25 years younger. He shows
that, ®in both the northern European countries as a whole and North
America ... the mother-daughter ratio has climbed steeply for much
of the period 1950-1980. During the years 1990 through 2002, the
upward trend is expected to reverse [...]; after 2005 the trend is
projected to reverse once again, with an even sharper increase to
unprecedentedly high levels by 2025 ...¯ [89].
In any case, as available research shows, it is the
composition, more than the sheer size, of the available kin that
makes it possible to predict the help that the elderly can expect
in old-age or in case of need. In its turn, the ®composition¯
covers many different factors: gender, children's age, if they are
one's own children or step- children, marital status, possible work
activity, working hours, the presence of other relatives, the
presence of a husband or wife, and so on, including even the degree
of proximity when the children do not live in the same house as
their elderly parents. Each of the possible combinations of these
factors corresponds to a different opportunity to meet the needs of
the elderly parent, thus a greater or lesser
quantity- quality of help: from domestic services to personal care,
from financial help to companionship, from entertainment to the
benefits of economies of scale in consumption90.
Other intervening variables include the sex of the elderly
person, his economic circumstances, those of his/her children,
his/her state of health, his/her level of education, and others
that can, in one way or another, increase or lessen the
probability that the children will assist their parent, live with
him/her or live separately [91]. Obviously, the size and
composition of the available kin network matter (usually, the
greater the number of children, the greater the probability that
the elderly person will live with one of them or in close spatial
proximity); but the most important element, that which is decisive
for the quality of relationships, is the gender relationship. The
kin network is strongly ®feminized¯; in fact, it is mostly women
who care for the elderly.
An Italian survey (1983) on interfamily relationships
confirms that the greatest proportion of assistance bestowed on
elderly people comes from the middle age-groups and above all from
daughters and daughters-in- law [92]. A secondary analysis by A. D.
Wolf and A. Pinnelli on the data of the same survey shows clearly
that the responsibility for the care of parents who are lacking in
self- sufficiency, cohabiting or not, weighs almost exclusively on
the daughters, without support from the formal network of services
[93]. What is more, the shortage of public services is an implicit
recognition of the functions carried out by the family and, within
it, by the woman; the same is true for the so-called ®community
care¯, where the role of care-givers is taken on chiefly by women.
A. S. and P. H. Rossi also reach similar conclusions in one
of the few in-depth studies on the ties between parents and
children: the ®most extensive patterns of reciprocal help were
predicted and were found in the same-sex dyad of mothers and
daughters¯ [94]. The conclusions of this study offer much food for
thought as regards the analysis of the relationships between the
kin network and the demographic change. Despite the decline in
fertility, the increase in divorces and out-of-wedlock births, and
the growth of ®blended families¯, the pattern of primary relations
between parents and children does not seem to have undergone
drastic alterations. These phenomena, according to A. Rossi,
certainly introduce elements of risk into family life; in many
cases - as has been amply proved [95] - they are the cause of
poverty and exclusion and can have important implications for the
future well-being of children, including educational and economic
attainment, and family formation. All the same, on the basis of
the results of her research, A. Rossi affirms that the basic
nucleus of mother- child relationship has not been damaged [96].
The experience of separation and of divorce contributes
appreciably to attenuate duties towards relatives, both close and
distant; usually we find more frequent and more solid levels of
exchanges and mutual- help bonds in united families than in
families that have suffered the trauma of disruption. The absence
of the father, after the break-up of the union, is a well-
documented fact. In spite of this, A. Rossi maintains that the
recent demographic dynamics seem to have encouraged the production
of countertrends; as if, faced by the necessity of overcoming the
difficulties caused by marital instability, by old age and by the
decline in the birth rate, modern society - and especially the
woman - had eventually developed its own means of defence.
Why the woman? Because women are more likely to remain
widows in old age and thus to need care and assistance; because
women tend to remarry less frequently than men after a divorce;
because the proportion of women who have children outside marriage
has increased; because women are more likely than men to live
separately from their children at a late age, as most research
shows; and finally, because women, being less independent
economically and having less social security protection, have
always been more exposed to the difficulties of old age.
For this series of reasons, women - as A. Rossi writes -®have
a greater developmental stake in maintaining close relations with
their parents, siblings, and children than do men ...¯ [97].
Women's greater propensity to invest in family ties and to
cultivate personal relationships seems, in these conditions, like
a kind of anthropological adaptation to the social environment; an
anticipatory precaution towards the appearance of possible needs in
the immediate future. That is to say, that being more exposed to
the risks of life and at the same time enjoying fewer social
guarantees, they have tried to do something about it:
intelligently, they ®vaccinate¯ themselves against these risks by
accumulating social, family and kinship credits which can be
exacted in times of need. The tools of this exchange strategy are
those of interpersonal relationships, of assistance and of
solidarity. More than any other social figure, women ®produce
solidarity by means of solidarity¯.
The massive presence of women in the labour market has
weakened the relationship with the partner (increase in divorces)
and has depressed fertility (reduction of offspring); in addition,
the extension of social security systems to women has reduced the
duties of children toward elderly mothers. But these tendencies
have coincided with correctives. Owing to greater scholarization
and the growth in unemployment, children stay at home longer;
maternal care is exercised for a period of around 20 to 30 years,
during which presumably the children will be more exposed to the
influence of female behaviour and life-styles. Finally, thanks to
the combined effect of retirement insurances and the increase of
life expectancy, elderly parents are ever less dependent on
economic assistance from their children, but this lesser
dependence is more than offset by the growing need for care and
assistance in old age. Social dependence takes the place of
economic dependence, and family solidarity takes over from
intergenerational solidarity. The prolonging of children's
dependence on their parents is counterbalanced by the prolonging of
parents' dependence on their children; and if marital
instability continued its course, this reciprocity between parents
and children would tend to develop more and more along the
maternal line. If this is true (but it is necessary to continue
research on this point), important consequences could follow.
13. Hopes and options: concluding remarks
Women would find themselves in the position of the
protagonists of change. They would be the central figures in
relationships of intergenerational solidarity. They would be given
the task of compensating, as far as solidarity and
interpersonal ties are concerned, the impoverishment of the
relationships of material exchanges and of intergenerational
alliance. This hypothesis is not without foundation. Many studies
have demonstrated that the diffusion of new living
arrangements expands, instead of weakening, obligations within
kinship. The case of recomposed families is typical. The duties
and norms that take shape in these families create new
constellations of relationships which ®surrogate¯ to a great
extent, often extending them, the ties of affection, solidarity and
brotherhood present in the traditional family; obliging its members
to invent new forms of parentship, and ®giving society the task of
learning to pass from the singular to the plural¯ [98]. And the
creator of this complex edifice of interpersonal
relationships is, above all, the woman; anyway, the feminine line
continues to be a significant axis in the construction of these
relationships [99].
Already today women are located centrally as the providers of
nurture and care. But this does not mean that the solution of the
generational question must pass via the accentuation of that
compulsory altruism which in the past distinguished the role of the
woman in the family and in society. The risk that society and the
state might rely on this resource is nevertheless real. If
demographic ageing and the generational conflict were to lead to a
change in course of welfare state programmes, the temptation could
be to revive ®old-fashioned solidarity¯, to count once again on the
strength and the flexibility of the reproductive labour of women.
To a certain extent, something of the kind has already happened in
the past, with the appearance of the first signs of crisis in the
social state. Then, a large part of the
responsibility for the maintenance of adequate levels of welfare
for the citizens was moved to the family itself, and on the unpaid
labour of women [100]; and in general the stress has been placed on
the opportuneness of encouraging mothers to return to the home and
on the responsibility of families in the tasks of care and
assistance.
The ®exploitation¯ of women's domestic labour entered into
crisis only recently - for two absolutely foreseeable reasons. One
is the rapid decline in fertility. The second, of contrary sign,
is the increased female presence on the labour market. In the past
two decades, a break seems to have taken place in the delicate
balance that regulates the structure of relations of production and
reproduction. Long-standing regimes were literally shattered
within a brief space of time. The lack of a policy of family
assistance and of an adequate structure of social services provided
no shield to combat the consequences of the woman's exit from the
family. Moreover, the imbalances present in the family division of
labour have prevented women from freeing themselves from the
traditional tasks of child-raising and taking care of the
household.
In the face of growing demands for social services and for
actions directed toward striking a conciliatory balance between
work and family, only timid signs of attention are being shown by
political forces. At the same time, there can be no thought of
arresting the ®triumphal march¯ of women's independence, nor is it
likely that the decline in births will come to a halt of itself, by
divine will, without an incisive and permanent shift of course.
This does not mean that there are no further areas for a possible
resumption of solidarity. Perhaps there are. But at what cost?
And at whose expense?
The point is that, if one really wants to finds a solution
that is ®compatible¯ between the ageing of the population, the
generational question, the decline in births and women's freedom of
choice, it is necessary to undermine the balance of powers,
privileges and discrimination on which society is based. And this
result will only arrive through an overall modification of the
relations of give and take, of the sharing of advantages and
disadvantages between the different groups and classes of society:
old and young, women and men, natives and immigrants (of whom we
have not spoken in this paper). In order to carry out this
®revolution¯, we must identify the knot to untie, the point to act
upon so as to get out of the shoals in which demography, politics
and gender find themselves today. There is no doubt that the
problem is complex. It cannot be dealt with in a comprehensive
manner. It will be necessary to make choices; above all choices
capable of reflecting - in concentric circles - on the whole
system. The condition of the woman, for her strategic position in
procreation, in the system of solidarity, in family life, in
intergenerational relationships, represents the ®ideal¯ point on
which to place the lever of renewal.
In the present circumstances, however, this process cannot be
triggered by reinforcing women's responsibilities in those areas
where their presence has been strongest and most decisive; but
rather by acting in those areas where the woman is in a weaker
position and has fewer guarantees, that is in the field of
production and extra- domestic work. A. Rossi agrees: ®What is
needed today is improvement in women's pay and job security;
increased flexibility of working hours and family leaves; expanded
child and elder care facilities and tax exemption levels;
equalizing of the economic circumstances of couples with children
and of those without children; provision of child and health care;
development of new institutional devices to assure that men support
the children they father; and empowerment of girls and women to
take charge of their lives and value themselves for the qualities
they have as women ... [M]uch of what concerns us today under the
rubric of intergenerational issues could be solved by dealing with
issues of gender iniquity¯ [101].
In other words, what is needed is a transformation of socio-
political trends, a change in the hierarchy of priorities. Towards
the woman and towards the family, aiming at one and the same time
at productive and reproductive relationships. Towards the woman:
in the first place for reasons of social equity, but also -
instrumentally - for the social importance of procreative choices;
for the subjective and objective motives that connect the female
figure to the web of solidarity within and between the generations;
finally, because it is from the quantity of the female workforce
and from the ®duration¯ of her presence in the labour market that
the tenability of the social security system will depend in the
next decades; and this presence will depend, it its turn, on the
existence of motivating conditions capable of harmonizing the
choices of reproduction and care activities (which are destined to
grow with the ageing of the population) with working choices,
subjective interests with those of society.
But also towards the family. First of all, because the
family is the chosen domicile of solidarity, the place of ®free of
charge¯, f redistribution and of reciprocity; so help given to
families is the equivalent of a right and proper recognition of the
value of solidarity. Second, because helping the family (of
whatever kind) in the performance of its duties is, for the moment
(ceteris paribus), the only possible way to avoid child poverty.
Third, because family instability has very costly social
implications, and although we know little or nothing about the
relationship between the lack of an adequate family policy and the
pattern of divorces, on this front it is wise to leave no stone
unturned. Fourth, because it is unrealistic to expect public-
sector action sufficient to cope with the difficult problems of
care and assistance that inevitably go with an increasingly aged
society.
Even more than for (trivial?) ideological reasons, of mere
equity and distributive justice, the adoption of this strategy is
therefore prompted by requirements of a political nature. The
tasks connected with solidarity, with the care and assistance of
dependent individuals during the course of their life cycle are not
private privileges or discretionary options of a gender. They are
part and parcel of the needs of the whole society. Indeed, they
are crucial to the safeguarding of primary social and
individual rights, to the protection of the weak and less
privileged, and to the harmonious development of social relations
among those of the same age group and among the generations.
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_______________________________
1. K. Davis, 1991, p. 5.
2. Eurostat, 1991.
3. Commission of the European Communities, 1994, tab. 9, p.45.
4. F. T. Denton and B. G. Spencer, 1988, p.99.
5. K. Mannheim, 1952, p.291.
6. R. Lee, 1994, p.135.
7. Ibidem, pp.135-136.
8. Ibidem, p.136.
9. Ibidem, p.137.
10. J. Coleman, 1990, p.584.
11. Ibidem, p.585.
12. J. Qvortrup, forthcoming.
13. N. Keyfitz, 1991, p.244.
14. V. Zelizer, 1985.
15. R. Lee, 1990, pp.17-32.
16. J. Coleman, 1990, p.604.
17. S. H. Preston, 1989, p.22.
18. Cfr. G. B. Sgritta, 1994, pp.334-361.
19. UN Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1992,
p.383.
20. M. O'Higgins, 1988, pp.201-228.
21. Oecd, 1985.
22. D. Thomson, 1989, p.39.
23. R. Lesthaeghe and G. Moors, 1991, p.259.
24. UN Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1992,
p.387.
25. Ibidem, see tab. 4, p.388.
26. D. Thomson, 1991, p.8.
27. Ibidem, p.56.
28. UN Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1992,
p.390.
29. Ibidem, see tab. 8, p.393, and tab. 10, p.394.
30. Oecd, 1988, tab. 18.
31. P. Hedstrom and S. Ringen, 1990, p.100.
32. M. O'Higgins, 1988, p.223.
33. UN Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1992,
p.396.
34. D. Holtz-Eakin and T. M. Smeeding, 1994, p.104.
35. T. Smeeding et al., 1993, pp.229-256.
36. D. Holtz-Eakin and T. M. Smeeding, 1994, p.127.
37. S. Danziger and J. Stern, 1990.
38. G. A. Cornia, 1990, p.29.
39. P.Hedstrom and S.Ringen, 1990, p.94.
40. S. Maital and K. I. Morgan, 1992, p.54.
41. M. Wright Edelman, 1992, pp.13-15.
42. The Report of the Commission on Social Justice, 1994, p.31.
43. G. B. Sgritta and A. L. Zanatta, 1994, p.192.
44. T. M. Smeeding, 1992, p.31.
45. Ibidem, tab. 1, p.31 and tab. 3, p.33; see also T. Smeeding,
B. Boyle Torrey and M. Rein, 1988, tab. 5.12, p.113.
46. J. O'Neill, 1994, pp.102-103. Cfr. also D. Thomson, 1991; D.
Thomson, 1993, pp.215- 237; C. Saint-tienne, 1993; C. McKie,
1993; G. B. Sgritta, 1993, pp.15-32.
47. D. Thomson, 1989, p.51.
48. D. Thomson, 1991, p.56.
49. N. Daniels, 1988, p.41.
50. G. B. Sgritta, 1994, p.358.
51. A. Walker, 1993, p.151.
52. Ibidem, p.153.
53. E. R. Kingson, B. A. Hirshorn and J. M. Cornman, 1986, p.156.
54. Ibidem, p.82.
55. Ibidem, p.83.
56. Ibidem, p.21.
57. Ibidem, p.145.
58. V. Bengtson, 1993, pp.12-13.
59. Commissione delle Comunit… Europee, 1994, p.119.
60. European Commission, 1994, p.19.
61. Commissione delle Comunit… Europee, 1994, tabb. 3, 4, 5, 8, 11
and 12.
62. D. Thomson, 1991, p.25.
63. The labour force participation rates of men aged 55 to 64
fell, from 1970 to 1985, as follows: United States: from 80.7
to 63.3 per cent; France: from 75.4 to 50.1 per cent; West
Germany: from 80.1 to 57 per cent; Netherlands: from 80.6 to
47 per cent; United Kingdom: from 91.2 to 68.2 per cent;
Sweden: from 85.4 to 75.9 per cent. Cfr. K. Jacobs, M. Kohli
and M. Rein, 1991, tab. 2.4, p.57.
64. D. Thomson, 1991, p.92.
65. D. Franco et al., 1992, pp.26-27.
66. T. Cowen and D. Parfit, 1992, p.144.
67. R. Lee, 1994, p.140.
68. S. G. Gould and J. L. Palmer, 1988, p.415.
69. Commission of the European Communities, 1994, tab. 15, p.54.
70. Ibidem, p.53.
71. L. L. Bumpass, 1990, p.485.
72. F. F. Furstenberg jr. and A. Cherlin, 1991, p.15.
73. L. L. Bumpass, 1990, p.485.
74. F. F. Furstenberg jr. and A. Cherlin, 1991, pp.13-14.
75. Commission of The European Communities, 1994, tab. 6, p.39.
76. L. L. Bumpass, 1990, p.488.
77. Commission des Communaut‚s Europ‚ennes, 1993, p.77.
78. Ibidem, tab. 3.10, p.86 and tab. 3.14, p.90.
79. R. Lesthaeghe and G. Moors, 1995-1, p.11.
80. D. Holtz-Eakin and T. M. Smeeding, 1994, p.138.
81. F. F. Furstenberg jr. and A. Cherlin, 1991, p.95.
82. A. Walker, 1993, p.157.
83. P. Ari‚s, 1980, p.649.
84. J. Coleman, 1990, p.604.
85.E. Beck-Gernsheim, 1988, p.112.
86. UN Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, 1992,
p.21.
87. R. Moroney, 1976; G. B. Sgritta, 1984.
88. G. B. Sgritta, op.cit., tab. 4, p.93.
89. D. A. Wolf, 1994, fig. 5.1, pp.151-152.
90. T. K. Burch and B. J. Matthews, 1987, p.499.
91. D. A. Wolf, 1994, p.173 ff.
92. G. B. Sgritta, 1986, tab. 3, p.175.
93. D. A. Wolf and A. Pinnelli, 1989.
94. A. S. Rossi, 1993, p.194.
95. I. Garfinkel and S. S. McLanahan, 1986, p.17 ff.
96. A. Rossi, 1993 , p.195.
97. Idem
98. I. Th‚ry, 1995, p.33.
99. M. W. Riley and J. W. Riley jr., 1993, pp.169-189; F. F.
Furstenberg and A. J. Cherlin, 1991 , p.93 ff.
100. G. B. Sgritta, 1989, p.81 ff.
101. A. Rossi, 1993, p.208.