Filip Chybalski, Agnes Orosz and Radosław Kurach
The article examines the interplay between welfare state regimes and the distribution of welfare between generations.
Abstract
Purpose
The article examines the interplay between welfare state regimes and the distribution of welfare between generations.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from 2017 for 24 European countries on six standard of living dimensions, the authors investigate the intergenerational welfare distribution in a two-stage procedure: (1) the authors compare the intergenerational welfare distribution across welfare state regimes using their existing typologies and find a moderate nexus. Therefore, (2) the authors employ clustering procedure to look for a new classification that would better reflect the cross-country variation in the intergenerational welfare division.
Findings
The authors find a complex relationship between the welfare state model and welfare distribution across generations and identify the policy patterns that shape it. Continental and liberal regimes are quite similar in these terms and favour the elderly generation. Social-democratic and CEE regimes seem to be a bit more balanced. COVID-19 pandemic will probably increase the intergenerational imbalance in terms of welfare distribution in favour of the elderly.
Originality/value
In contrast to the majority of previous studies, which employ inputs (social expenditures) or outputs (benefits, incomes), the authors use intergenerational balance indicators reflecting living conditions of a given generation as compared to the reference point defined as an average situation of all generations.
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Keywords
Edyta Marcinkiewicz and Filip Chybalski
The authors’ empirical investigation attempts to identify the nexus between the economic well-being of Polish elderly households and their housing situation, which can be related…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors’ empirical investigation attempts to identify the nexus between the economic well-being of Polish elderly households and their housing situation, which can be related to the impact of the mass privatization policy implemented in Poland in the early 1990s. The generation who benefited from the process at that time currently includes great majority of people at retirement age who are homeowners.
Design/methodology/approach
In the study, the authors employ micro data from the Polish Social Diagnosis household survey and analyze them in a multinomial logistic regression framework. They explore the nexus between both subjective and objective measures of income and housing circumstances.
Findings
The results imply that housing arrangements do not significantly differentiate Polish households in terms of their economic well-being when controlling for other sociodemographic factors. This may result from two independent, but possibly overlapping, reasons. The first is that housing circumstances are quite evenly distributed across elderly population as compared to income. This may be a direct effect of the “(socialist) state legacy,” as in the socialist era there was a strong focus on diminishing income and wealth inequalities in society. The second explanation is that better housing circumstances are not a sufficient means to improve the welfare of the elderly.
Originality/value
The study’s analysis is associated with little investigated area of the welfare effects of homeownership in the old age at the individual level. It explores this issue on the example of Poland, which is a typical representative of the group of post-socialist countries that share a common feature of “state legacy welfare” that is characterized by extensive mortgage-free homeownership.
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Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether cross-country differences in pensionable age explain such differences in economic activity of people at near-retirement age.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether cross-country differences in pensionable age explain such differences in economic activity of people at near-retirement age.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical study uses regression models for macro-panel encompassing 21 European countries in the period 2008–2014.
Findings
Empirical results indicate that pensionable age is a determinant of cross-country differences in employment rate in the near-retirement age group, and less a factor differentiating average effective retirement age. It turns out that other factors matter, including salaries and wages as percentage of GDP (treated as a proxy for the occupational composition of populations across the countries studied), self-employment, participation in education and training, or self-perceived health.
Social implications
The problem of economic activity at the near-retirement age is complex and cannot be limited to legal regulations concerning pensionable age. The policy aiming at stimulating the economic activity of the near-elderly should include actions on many sides including labour market, pension system, education, training, or health care.
Originality/value
The results complement studies based on the single-country approach and demonstrate that pensionable age does not account for cross-country differences in terms of average effective age of retirement when controlling for other factors. Moreover, factors differentiating effective retirement age and employments rates across countries studied are not similar.