Abstract
In this edited volume, the authors investigate whether the labour market transformations brought by globalization, combined with the ageing of populations, have consequences for the well-being of the elderly, specifically on their employment trajectories, their transition to retirement and their economic well-being. Using a comparative approach, the authors argue that national institutional arrangements, such as welfare and employment relations systems, have a fundamental intervening role in filtering the employment and income risks for the elderly; thus, they investigate whether country-specific institutions moderate the relationships among globalization, demographic changes and the economic well-being of older people in 10 western countries.
The book is made up of three parts. In the first part, an introductory chapter (Chapter 1 by Buchholz, Rinklake, Schilling, Kurz, Schmelzer and Blossfeld) provides the backbone of the book by (1) developing the theoretical framework for answering the research questions posed by the authors, (2) spelling out the role of the national institutional settings and (3) specifying the hypotheses on the income and employment situation of the elderly in the countries under consideration. In this lucid chapter, the authors make a valid case in arguing that globalization, through the internationalization of the labour market and intensified competition, has led to accelerated growth and rapid economic change, which in turn has increased the pressure to relocate or dismiss workers. With the ageing of populations and the decrease of the working-age population, early retirement strategies, used in many countries up to the 1990s to remove workers from the overcrowded labour market while providing retirees with the economic resources to maintain their living status, became excessively burdensome for welfare states. The authors argue that, as a result of these processes, elderly workers might be at risk of employment and income insecurity in later life, if they are unable to prolong their working life efficiently, due to lack of skills or insufficient productivity. Although maintaining that changes due to globalization and the ageing structure of the population could have consequences for the elderly in all countries, the authors hypothesize that national institutional systems are likely to moderate the impact of these changes on the elderly’s well-being.
In particular, the authors stress that employment relations systems, educational and occupational systems and welfare and pension systems filter the risks faced by the elderly in terms of employment and income. To facilitate cross-national comparisons, Buchholz et al. divide the considered countries into five groups (or regimes), based on the characteristics of their national institutions. These regimes, which are not dissimilar from the welfare regimes proposed by Esping-Andersen (1999), are: the conservative regime, including Germany and the Netherlands; the fragmented welfare regime (Italy and Spain); the social-democratic regime (Denmark and Sweden); and the liberal regime (the UK and the United States). Finally, Hungary and Estonia are grouped together because both are postsocialist countries, although the authors stress key differences between the two. Having discussed the differences among the groups, the authors hypothesize regime-specific consequences for the elderly in terms of late career instability, the timing of the transition to retirement and the level of old age income insecurity. For example, the authors expect the elderly’s economic situation in liberal countries to be more problematic than elsewhere, because the lack of public support in this regime increases the need to be employed; thus, older people are likely to continue working and face increasing instability in employment in later life as their employment-related skills become obsolete. In contrast, the authors hypothesize that the elderly should be more protected against employment and income insecurity in social democracies, where the welfare state pursues lifelong learning and provides high levels of social security.
In the second part of the volume, country-specific contributions (Chapters 2–11) systematically test the hypotheses. Each chapter contains an introduction on the institutional context of the country, a set of country-specific hypotheses, a detailed description of the data and methods used, an elaborate presentation of the findings and a concluding section summarizing the results. The overall structure of the chapters and the type of data and methods used are consistent throughout the second part of the volume and encourage comparisons of results among countries. Notwithstanding, each chapter stands on its own and can be read separately.
In the third and final part, late working life and retirement in Europe and the United States are compared (Chapter 12 by Kurz, Buchholz, Veira-Ramos, Rinklake and Blossfeld). In this chapter, the authors provide a thorough detailed summary of the initial expectations and the findings, while helping the reader grasp the larger picture that emerges from the analyses.
The volume is intended to bring together the results of an international research programme that began in 2005 and was carried out by a network of country experts. Two of the editors and several of the country experts were also involved in the writing of the 2006 edited volume Globalization, Uncertainty and Late Careers in Society (Blossfeld et al., 2006). Indeed, Aging Populations, Globalization and the Labor Market builds on and integrates the main argument proposed in the 2006 volume, where the authors explored the relationships among globalization, national institutions, and the well-being of the elderly. In particular, they highlighted the risks faced by elderly workers with obsolete skills in globalized societies characterized by accelerated economic and technical growth. With the 2011 volume, the network of experts adds complexity to the picture by introducing demographic change to their theoretical framework, thus providing a more up-to-date, nuanced and richer description of the relationship between macro-level processes and individual outcomes.
Although it contains a great amount of information, the book can be praised for its neat organization, clarity and detail. With its rigorous comparison of countries with different institutional settings, the use of high-quality longitudinal micro-data and appropriate data analysis techniques, the book lives up to the expectations the editors set in previous volumes, which applied a similar approach on related topics (see e.g. Blossfeld et al., 2008; Kurz and Blossfeld, 2004).