Journal of the Economics of Ageing最新文献

{"title":"When wealth hurts: Inheritances and the health of older Europeans","authors":"Ignacio Belloc ,&nbsp;José Alberto Molina ,&nbsp;Jorge Velilla","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100591","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100591","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the impact of inheritances on physical and mental health outcomes, using a longitudinal, cross-country dataset covering 16 European countries over 2004–2017. The results show that the receipt of an inheritance is negatively associated with BMI and being obese among women. We also find evidence of an increase in the probability of experiencing depressive symptoms among women following an inheritance. When we account for individual heterogeneity, we find that the receipt of an inheritance increases the probability of being depressed by 2.3 percentage points among women. This finding is driven by unexpected inheritances and female heirs who are less educated, unmarried, unemployed, and living in Southern European countries. In addition, the receipt of an inheritance increases the probability of women engaging in vigorous and moderate physical activities by 2.6 and 2 percentage points, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"32 ","pages":"Article 100591"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144314644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to this Special Issue: The Economics of Ageing","authors":"David E. Bloom ,&nbsp;Andrew J. Scott","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100579","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100579","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"32 ","pages":"Article 100579"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144314643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exclusion from a ‘mandatory’ pension scheme: Late-stage dropouts from the National Pension System in South Korea","authors":"Jongseok Oh ,&nbsp;Seho Son ,&nbsp;Kun Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100578","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100578","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this study, we investigate an underexplored mechanism through which a mandatory pension scheme effectively excludes low-status older adults. We examine the patterns of individuals dropping out from the National Pension System just before the eligibility age, the largest public pension scheme in South Korea. We analyze administrative pension insurance data on individuals eligible for a lump-sum refund of lifetime contributions at age 60 due to insufficient contribution records – a negatively selected subpopulation. We employ a set of linear probability models with several fixed-effect specifications to investigate individual- and regional-level determinants of late-stage dropout. Results reveal a unique U-shaped relationship between the size of accrued contributions and the probability of dropping out, suggesting that immediate budget constraints could be the primary reason for dropouts among low-status workers. We also find that individuals with unstable labor market histories are more inclined to choose the refund option, while a regional economic decline is associated with an increase in withdrawals. We call for alternative policy approaches to protect the financially vulnerable and provide implications for other pension latecomer countries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100578"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144189432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between Beveridge and Bismarck: Preferences for redistribution through public pensions","authors":"Friedrich Breyer,&nbsp;Christian Breunig,&nbsp;Mark Kapteina,&nbsp;Guido Schwerdt,&nbsp;Maj-Britt Sterba","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100570","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100570","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine preferences for redistribution in Germany’s public pension system as well as notions of fairness of the system, using survey and experimental data from citizens and politicians. Our findings reveal a widespread rejection of strict proportionality between contributions and benefits, with strong support for greater redistribution to low earners. Information on inequalities in life expectancy reduces perceived fairness and increases support for redistribution among voters and politically moderate legislators. The study also reveals significant knowledge gaps about the basic features of the existing pension scheme among citizens. We demonstrate that policy-relevant information influences fairness perceptions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100570"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144195890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Biological age across the globe: 1990–2019","authors":"Casper Worm Hansen ,&nbsp;Holger Strulik","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100573","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100573","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we use data of the Global Burden and Disease Study to compute biological age across the world at the country–age-group–year level and separately for men and women. Biological age is the predicted age of a person determined by their health indicators. As health indicator, we use the frailty index, which is the proportion of age-related health deficits present in a person. We demonstrate that biological age varies significantly across the globe. For instance, the average biological age of chronologically 65-year old men varies between 61 to 74 years across countries. Given chronological age, biological age increased significantly from 1990–2019, in particular in age groups above 65. We also find evidence for conditional convergence of biological age. These trends are driven primarily by biologically young people in Africa who are becoming biologically older, and by biologically old people in rich countries who are becoming biologically younger. We find little evidence of absolute convergence, i.e. declining inequality in the global distribution of biological age.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100573"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144204293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Direct and spillover effects of long-term care insurance on Chinese elderly frailty","authors":"Lin Lin ,&nbsp;Min He ,&nbsp;Peng Nie","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100571","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100571","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Frailty has become a pressing public health concern within the elderly population. However, the extent to which long-term care insurance (LTCI) coverage can alleviate frailty among elderly beneficiaries is still insufficiently explored. Utilizing data from the 2011–2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the city-by-city rollout of the LTCI program, this study examines the impact of China’s LTCI policy on the frailty of older beneficiaries and their spouses. Our findings reveal a statistically significant reduction in frailty among older beneficiaries three to five years after LTCI implementation. Moreover, these positive effects extend to spouses, as indicated by a decreased frailty index among them. Notably, the benefits are more pronounced among beneficiaries and spouses who are male, reside in rural areas, and have lower levels of education and consumption. The reduction in frailty is primarily attributed to enhanced subjective well-being and reduced financial strain among beneficiaries, rather than increased utilization of long-term care services.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100571"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144105357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Population aging, living arrangements, and inequality: The role of familial transfers in South Korea","authors":"Hyun Kyung Kim ,&nbsp;Sang-Hyop Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100577","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100577","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many studies have shown that population aging leads to an increase in inequality because inequalities in income and consumption tend to increase with age. However, the effect of population aging on consumption inequality among the elderly may depend on the strength of the old-age support system, as transfers can reduce inequality. Although the role of public transfers has been widely examined, little is known about the role of familial transfers in reducing inequality. This study constructs National Inclusion Accounts (NIA) by using South Korea’s micro-level National Transfer Accounts (NTA) data by living arrangement and household income level and examines the role of familial transfers in the old-age support system and in reducing inequality. The results suggest that intergenerational familial transfers in extended households help to reduce consumption inequality among older people. By income level, older people in low-income households are more dependent on public transfers. Older people in high-income nuclear households rely more heavily on their own assets for consumption, and those in high-income extended households are more dependent on familial transfers. A counterfactual analysis suggests that consumption inequality among older people has increased over time in large part due to a rapid decline in extended households in South Korea.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100577"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144125371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging and work capacity","authors":"Italo Lopez Garcia ,&nbsp;Nicole Maestas ,&nbsp;Kathleen J. Mullen","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100576","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100576","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Declining health with age can limit individuals’ work capacity, increasing the likelihood of mismatch between their abilities to perform certain tasks and the minimum demands of the jobs available to them. Traditional measures of health status are insufficient for understanding how labor supply outcomes are influenced by the match between individuals’ abilities and job demands. We use unique survey data on individuals’ self-reported ability levels, harmonized with occupational ability requirements from the O*NET database, to develop a new measure of work capacity. We find that average abilities overall and across different domains are high relative to average occupational demands. At the same time, age-related declines in abilities are modest, at least through age 70. Putting these elements together, individuals’ work capacity is relatively stable with age. Finally, we show that our measures of work capacity are predictive of current and expected future labor supply outcomes, with and without controls for standard health variables.</div><div>This research was supported by grant number UM19-02 from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center (MRDRC) and by grant number R01AG056239 from the National Institute on Aging. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the opinions or policy of SSA or any agency of the federal government. We thank Kate Bent, John Pencavel, seminar participants at the Tinbergen Institute, Tilburg University, Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, Erasmus University, KU Leuven, UQAM, the University of Chile and USC, and participants of the 2019 MRDRC Workshop, 2019 Retirement and Disability Research Consortium Conference, 2020 Stanford Working Longer Conference, 2022 CIPHER conference, 2024 Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting, 2024 American Society of Health Economists Annual Conference, 2024 London Economics of Longevity and Ageing Conference, and the 2024 Association for Public Policy Analysis &amp; Management Fall Research Conference for helpful comments and suggestions, and Michael Jetsupphasuk, Patrick Rhatigan and David Zingher for excellent research assistance. The data used in this article are available online at <span><span>https://alpdata.rand.org/</span><svg><path></path></svg></span>.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100576"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144105358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The evolution of age-friendly jobs in a rapidly ageing economy","authors":"Hyeongsuk Kim ,&nbsp;Chulhee Lee ,&nbsp;Karen Eggleston","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100575","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100575","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Korea’s labor force shift toward older, female, and more educated workers has been even more dramatic than that of the US in recent decades. This paper documents how Korean job characteristics vary by age and characterizes the “age-friendliness” of Korean employment from 2000 to 2020 by applying the Age-Friendliness Index (AFI) developed by Acemoglu, Mühlbach and Scott to Korean occupational data. The AFI measures job characteristics—such as physical demands and job autonomy—based on occupational descriptions and worker preferences. Our primary empirical findings are that the age-friendliness of Korean jobs grew more slowly than in the US, and that older Koreans were not the main beneficiaries of these jobs. Both findings reflect the demographic, labor market, and institutional differences between Korea and the US. Slow growth of AFI can be partially explained by labor market rigidities, the role of large firms in Korea, and the flattening of managerial structures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100575"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144070479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging and age selectivity: Exploring differences across time and space","authors":"Sergei Scherbov ,&nbsp;Warren C. Sanderson","doi":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100574","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeoa.2025.100574","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper uses the methodology of the Characteristics Approach to the study of population aging to produce a framework in which population aging is consistently measured from both a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. To do this, it introduces the Retrospective Survival Age Threshold (RSAT) to complement the existing Prospective Old-Age Threshold (POAT). The Prospective Old-Age Threshold (POAT) is the forward-looking age at which remaining life expectancy is 15 years. The Retrospective Survival Age Threshold (RSAT) is a backward-looking age reflecting the age by which 79 % of adults (20 + ) have survived. These complementary thresholds, when used together, illuminate variations in trajectories of aging across different mortality regimes. Drawing on national and global data, we show that some countries exhibit parallel movement of POAT and RSAT (implying the expansion of the survival curve), while others display divergent trends linked to shifts in midlife mortality (often implying compression of the survival curve). Our results underscore how combining forward-looking and backward-looking ages can provide richer insights into aging processes than using chronological age alone.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45848,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Economics of Ageing","volume":"31 ","pages":"Article 100574"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144089450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}