In order of presentation:
Intergenerational changes and family support.
Emily Grundy
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
In this presentation I will firstly outline why intergenerational exchanges are important, with a particular focus on exchanges involving older people, and briefly review the main forms of intergenerational exchange, with a focus on exchanges within the family. I will next review changes and variations in some of the possible determinants of family support for older people, including changes and differentials in availability of spouses and children. I will then examine various aspects of support received (and provided by) older people, including living arrangements, exchanges of help and of money and provision and receipt of care. The presentation will focus particularly on data from Britain, but will also include comparative results from elsewhere in Europe and the USA.
Email: emily.grundy@lshtm.ac.uk
Ronald Lee
Departments of Demography & Economics, University of California at Berkeley
The transfer of income from adults to children has always been a central feature of human social and economic life. The transfer of income from adults to the elderly is also deeply rooted in history. The way these transfers occur has changed historically and is continuing to change in modern industrial societies. We can distinguish three fundamental causes of the changing patterns of reallocation of income over the life cycle. First, the shape of the economic life cycle itself has changed, in the sense that the economic activities of both children and the elderly have undergone marked shifts over time. Second, the institutional context of the reallocations has changed, from the family or small group to a large scale and impersonal public sector. Third, the demographic context has changed through declining mortality and fertility, altering the contours of the demographic life cycle, and altering the age distribution of the population. At one time, human society was an engine for investing in children, and the flow of resources was strongly downwards across age from all adults to children. That pattern has now changed, so that increasingly societies are redirecting the flow of resources upwards to the elderly, whose newly emerged economic dependency competes with that of children. I discuss this larger picture from the point of view of the theory and history of transfers, and the outlook for the future. My discussion is limited to the vertical transfers of resources, ie to flows across ages.
Email: rlee@demog.berkeley.edu
Alison O'Connell
Pensions Policy Institute
For anyone interested in pension policy, the UK is an exciting place to be at the moment. With unprecedented press coverage of the 'pensions crisis' and the 'savings gap', retirement income has been presented as a problem largely caused by more pensioners living longer. The government has committed to presenting proposals for pension reform early in 2006.
This presentation will unpick the real problems with current pension policy, explain the reform options and how reform can be afforded. It is based on the PPI's work over the last three years, including the economic modelling of future scenarios of state pension outcomes and private pension saving. It will show that the main issues are not those that generally get the headlines and that practical and affordable solutions exist.
Particular themes to be addressed will include the way the pension system works differently for women and men, the sustainability of the current pension system, and the potential for working at older ages to change the pensions landscape.
Email: alison@pensionspolicyinstitute.org.uk
Invited paper:
The Cuban Demographic Transition: Characteristics and peculiarities
Dr. Sonia I. Catasús Cervera, Havana Univerity
The important historical, economic, political and social events that occurred in Cuba during the course of the 20th century have been decisive for the demographic transition in the country, given the close relationship between social and economic development, the manner in which the population participates in this process, and the demographic dynamic of the population.
In relation to other Latin American countries, Cuba is one of the countries in which the demographic transition began first. This process has showed during its trajectory combinations of relatively balanced mortality and fertility levels, with respect to the reduction of both variables, and their rhythm during the different stages. These two behaviours don't constitute the only distinctive features in the region; this process incorporates the quick culmination of the transition with a homogeneous behaviour across the country's diverse territories and population subgroups, which constitutes an unparalleled experience in the Latin American subcontinent.
In this context, the social and economic transformation introduced by the revolutionary government beginning in 1959 had strong repercussions on the evolution to the incident variables of the demographic transition.
Cuba has now concluded its demographic transition. Although Cuba is an economically undeveloped country, its demographic indicators are similar to those of developed countries: life expectancy at birth is 76.15 years (2001-2003); the infant mortality rate is 6.3 per 1000 live births in 2003; fertility - the lowest in Latin American - reached 1.63 (TFR), or 0.79 daughters per woman; the average annual growth rate is 0.9 percent; and 75.3 percent of the population was urban in 2003.
The most important demographic events, focusing on the last phase of the demographic transition in Cuba, will be analysed in the present paper.
Senior Professor, Centre of Demographic Studies, Havana University. President of the Cuban Society for Population Studies (SOCUESPO) Email: catasus@cedem.uh.cu
Email: catasus@comuh.uh.cu