Ageing Populations in Post-Industrial Democracies: Comparative Studies of Policies and Politics began life as a series of workshops and panels in 2008–2009. The focus of the volume is on demographic aging and its political and policy implications across various societies, largely but not exclusively in Europe. The volume has eleven chapters, theoretically unified by the editors' approach to generational politics and policies. Vanhuysse and Goerres argue in the opening chapter that little progress has been made in political science in understanding older people and demographic aging, with the momentum largely taken by sociology, social gerontology, social program studies and pension studies. They seek to fill this gap with the essays in this volume.
The opening chapter by the editors sets out the need for this book and the conceptual framework it offers for the chapters that follow. The compelling argument for a political science examination of generations and politics is twofold. For millennia, generational struggles have formed the basis of political change, and yet political science has lagged behind other disciplines in studying population aging and generational change. In setting out the framework for a political analysis of generations, Vanhuyesse and Goerres point to the ambivalence of the term, “generation,” at once a cohort, family generation and age grouping. This is not new, as the authors acknowledge, but helpful to seeing how political science might add to insights on generational change and population aging.
Politics impact us differently as members of a cohort, a family and an age group. The chief contributors leading to population aging, fertility decline and increased longevity, are recognized as well to have political implications since younger cohorts are smaller and increased life expectancy poses challenges to welfare state policies, particularly pensions. The editors then outline what they call “causal black boxes” of the political dimensions of population aging, by asking key questions, each of which (paraphrased here) is addressed in the essays in the book. Among the key questions are how does aging change political processes? Why do generational policies change? Does population aging elevate generational issues in politics? How do governments balance interests of growing older populations with other priorities? How do political institutions mediate?
Hanley asks about the success of pensioners' parties across Europe and in Israel. In comparative qualitative analyses, he concludes that the stability of existing parties in Western Europe mitigates against the formation of age-based political entities. Their success in eastern European countries is in filling a niche opened by less stable political parties. Sciubba's chapter, along with the chapter by Hering, questions in different ways: how generational politics work in translating age interests into policy or in how age at retirement changes play out. Sciubba, in focusing on the three demographically eldest countries in the OECD, Germany, Italy and Japan, finds that all three have defied the notion of playing to a political base of older voters. Hering, similarly, finds that generational politics played only a limited role in the raising of retirement ages in the UK and Germany.
Aysan's chapter outlines four worlds of pensions, similar to Esping-Andersen's typology of welfare states. Relying on cluster analysis, he reports differing degrees of gender and generational inequalities. Kokkonen focuses on one factor in population aging, fertility, and asks about how policies related to union formation affect fertility and thus population aging. His conclusion is that dual-earner policies reduce the costs of reproduction for women.
Looking at the effect of population aging on policy expenditures, Tepe and Vanhuyesse find, with an innovative application of event history analysis to the timing of pension cutbacks, that neither timing in the electoral cycle nor degrees of institutional rigidity matter much. Instead, rising unemployment and population aging may result in accelerated medium cutbacks to pensions, particularly by right-wing governments. Fernandez finds that population aging tends to widen the benefits gap between contributors and non-contributors to pensions, with older voters more favourable to pensions that continue but with reduced benefits.
Differential effects of population aging on attitudes is taken up by several authors in this book. For example, Goerres and Tepe compare attitudes toward day care across 21 countries, specifically asking how family generational policies of the past shape the expectations of today's younger generations. Interestingly, they find that neither generational self-interest nor expectations based on past welfare state provisions fully determine attitudes. Edlund and Svallfors, in examining attitudes on income distribution and unemployment policies in 13 countries, find declining support for welfare state overall, but a sharp increase in the US over time, with no evidence that age differences are superseding class differences. Hudson, in the concluding chapter, focuses specifically on the US, finding that cohort makes little difference in attitudes toward public pensions and health care access. Rather, it is historical events combined with the framing of the political/policy challenges (such as unsustainable, “bankrupting future generations”) that matter in attitudes toward age-based programs.
This is a welcome and refreshing book, one that offers new insights on the complexities of population aging and generational relations through the lens of politics. It could productively be added to the bookshelf of population aging and generation scholars, no matter what their discipline. It would also be suitable for graduate or senior undergraduate courses in any subject related to aging.
