New Directions in the Sociology of Aging (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
7 Research Opportunities in the Demography of Aging--Melissa Hardy and Vegard Skirbekk
7 Research Opportunities in the Demography of Aging--Melissa Hardy and Vegard Skirbekk
Pages 120-150
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From page 120... ...
The longer-term consequences of fewer births were magnified by unanticipated reductions in mortality at older ages, and as fertility rates continued to fall and life expectancy to increase, populations grew older. The dilemma facing developed countries with relatively high proportions of older people will not be an easy one to resolve: How can the world's largest economies continue to offer their citizens a high quality of life when projections suggest many will experience a shrinking labor force, sluggish rates of economic growth, and a national budget increasingly encumbered by health-care and wage replacement commitments made to a segment of the population that continues to grow larger and live longer?
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From page 121... ...
These demographic developments coincided with changes in the gendered life course and gender roles, an expanding base of scientific knowledge, and a growing government obligation in promoting public welfare. How these processes are connected in terms of cause and effect remains a point of debate.
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From page 122... ...
The types of societal changes that coincided with -- some say fueled -- the decline in total fertility rates were not occurring in the developing world. Therefore, population growth continued unevenly through the higher fertility in the developing world, but also through the lowered later life mortality rates in developed countries.
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From page 123... ...
Because of various international programs, the social dynamics of aging in developing countries are influenced by the interventions of other nations. As in the developed countries, the prevalence of chronic disease in the developing world is rising.
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From page 124... ...
The scope of research into the demography of aging has expanded not only because populations in both developed and developing countries are getting older, but also because population aging is not occurring in isolation. Changes in family structure and living arrangements, in the accumulation and transmission of capital (human, social, and financial)
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From page 125... ...
The emphasis on the comparative study of people born at different times, in different places, and in different social circumstances underscores the need for creative measurement and data collection strategies that allow such comparisons. COHORTS, GENERATIONS, AND THE LIFE COURSE Three temporal concepts play a central role in demographic research by providing different ways to organize interrelated behaviors and linked lives.
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From page 126... ...
Alterations in the generational structure of families reflect the transformation of society's age structure and typical family size. For example, with increasing longevity and fewer children per household, a "longer" multigenerational family structure replaces a "wider" generational structure.
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From page 127... ...
the demography of the family, systems of stratification and inequality, and gender, which includes the study of social change in the life course and explores the intersections of changing behavioral patterns and variability in individual trajectories within changing environments and disparate circumstances using the cohorts and generations as the organizing concepts; and (3) the development of new approaches to projections and simulations that attempt to translate the changing composition of successive cohorts and the changing micro-processes that transform successive cohorts into macro-level features and population characteristics.
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From page 128... ...
In creating rules of eligibility for social programs, societies have relied on age as a quick and easily implemented criterion, but chronological age masks considerable population heterogeneity in capabilities. The standard indicators of population aging mean little if the content of those chronologically based measures, the health and functional status associated with any given age range, changes over time and place.
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From page 129... ...
Increased longevity could imply a prolonged period of decline, or the longer time span could be accompanied by a delay in the onset of health limitations. Policy makers' concerns about population aging were grounded in the historical connection between age, labor force withdrawal, and the onset of disability.
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From page 130... ...
Race and ethnicity, education, and income are among the factors that structure mortality rates. For example, during the latter part of the 20th century, education-related gaps in mortality rates grew substantially, particularly in the last decade (Cutler et al., 2010)
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From page 131... ...
Projections that cannot incorporate information on both changing composition and different social processes across cohorts and across regions may create a false sense of stability or crisis. Cohort-specific health trajectories that incorporate multiple measures may allow a better sense of interrelated processes, such as the interplay between biological and behavioral processes that damage health or facilitate resilience, repair, or recovery and how these processes are influenced by differential exposure to positive or negative social or physical environments, advancements in medical treatment or adaptive technologies, or increases in social support and interaction.
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From page 132... ...
While access to quality health care, nutritional foods, social support, and healthy behaviors may be reducing health risks across cohorts, the amount of stress that people routinely manage as more responsibilities fall into their laps may be working in the opposite direction. All of these observations point to possible connections between larger environments, cognitive styles, physiological reactions, coping techniques, and other types of resources on which people may draw.
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From page 133... ...
At the individual level, those with more schooling enjoy a competitive advantage in launching and sustaining stable and rewarding careers, higher levels of compensation and accumulated wealth, and longer and healthier lives. At the same time, more highly educated regions attract business and industry, and more highly educated countries boast higher levels of worker productivity, higher standards of living, and healthier populations along with lower total fertility rates, longer life expectancy, and a national infrastructure to promote social welfare.
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From page 134... ...
Educating women in the developing world is a major initiative in slowing population growth, because more educated women not only desire fewer children but also are better able to realize their fertility aspirations by having fewer children than less educated women. Research on women in Africa also points to the importance of empowering women to make decisions about their own lives.
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From page 135... ...
. The process of cohort replacement will gradually supplant earlier-born cohorts with later-born, more highly functioning cohorts, and if the trend toward improved cognitive functioning continues, so will this replacement process.
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From page 136... ...
. On the other hand, the age at which children shift to a status of independence from their parents seems to be getting older, as more adult children move back in with parents, rely on parental help with finances and childcare, and struggle to gain stability in their lives.
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From page 137... ...
Family Declining fertility rates and increased longevity have reshaped family structure for recent cohorts, but family dynamics have also changed, and the implications of these changes for how future cohorts will experience aging are unclear. Younger cohorts are marrying at later ages, often after a period of cohabitation, having children later in life, and relying more on reproductive technologies to conceive (Waite, 2005)
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From page 138... ...
The health benefits of marriage, women's longer life expectancy, and the informal networks of family caregiving reflect the experiences of specific cohorts in specific regions of the world. The cohorts studied were fulfilling the expectations of a gendered life course -- one that differed by race/ ethnicity and one that has been revised in some dramatic ways.
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From page 139... ...
When the advantaged cohorts are working-aged and the disadvantaged cohorts are older, these inter-cohort transfers can be funded from wage growth; however, when working-aged cohorts feel disadvantaged relative to the receiving cohorts and wages are stagnant, intergenerational transfers are reevaluated. Familial inheritances, growing income, wealth inequality, and the importance of endowments for sorting people onto different trajectories have received growing attention as sources of cumulative advantage over the life course.
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From page 140... ...
in compositional characteristics are expressions of the nature, timing, and sequencing of key life transitions. Understanding the interrelated processes generative of those transitions provides leverage for forecasting these compositional transformations, projecting how future cohorts may transition at older ages given their earlier behavior, and simulating how the introduction of constraints or supports may change transitional behaviors and population outcomes.
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From page 141... ...
Extensions of the cohort component model, the linkage of projections to their level of uncertainty, and the creative use of data-based and agent-based micro-simulation models can transform the
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From page 142... ...
Cohort component projection models apply age-specific rates to different birth cohorts, thereby producing an expected size, sex, and age structure for future populations. When an historic event significantly changes age-specific fertility and/or mortality rates for a segment of the population, projections should take the effects of this event into account (Schoen, 2006)
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From page 143... ...
Two approaches that are being pursued rely either on expert opinion or on the statistical analysis of historical time series data. The former combines subjective probability distributions for predictions from a field of experts to produce a set of "likely" values for vital rates (Lutz et al., 1998)
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From page 144... ...
Simulation techniques can be applied to large national samples or to "manufactured" data to demonstrate how social processes may unfold over time. When based on statistical models, the judicious use of counterfactuals, and Monte Carlo algorithms to adjust parameters of the time trend, simulations can extend the methodology of cohort component projections in useful directions (Raftery and Bao, 2010)
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From page 145... ...
These models thereby provide leverage in illuminating fundamental processes, such as the emergence of social structure, unintended consequences of policy "treatments," or the societal ramifications of rapid technological change. By design, ABMs fit well with demographic research on the life course, because the agents in ABMs are "located" in social time and space, socially integrated through networks of interaction, capable of strategic
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From page 146... ...
The traditional measures of population aging implicitly assume homogeneity in the aging process, and temporal comparisons based on these traditional measures assume that the societal implications associated with skills, abilities, functionalities, and behaviors linked to chronological age operate in the same way across time. There is ample evidence that neither of these assumptions is correct.
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From page 147... ...
. Life Course and Social Structure.
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From page 148... ...
. Toward a child-centered life course.
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From page 149... ...
. Variation in cognitive functioning as a refined approach to comparing aging across countries.
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From page 150... ...
Demographic Research, 25, 39-102. Thompson, W
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