Intragenerational Inequality Research Articles

Intergenerational Assistance with Home Ownership: Understanding the Relational Development of Financialized Subjectivities

ABSTRACT Recently scholars have turned their attention to the role of intergenerational financial assistance in facilitating entry into home ownership for young adults. This practice has been identified as a means through which intergenerational inequalities may be translated into intragenerational inequalities. However, the question of what this form of financial dependence on family means for both young adults and their parents has received less attention. This article reports on the findings of a study conducted with 15 related donor-recipient pairs (30 in-depth interviews in total) in the UK in 2019. Drawing on these findings, we show that the provision and receipt of intergenerational financial assistance does not simply reflect family practices, but instead plays an active part in developing and conveying them. We ultimately contend that the practice of giving and receiving financial transfers shapes individuals’ broader orientations to the property market, and to financial decision-making and planning.

Economic vulnerabilities and pandemic mobilities: Mobility of low-income populations in İstanbul during the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper explores the everyday mobilities of low-income populations during the Covid-19 pandemic through a mixed-methods study in İstanbul. It shows how additional economic burdens brought by the Covid-19 pandemic interplay with low-income residents’ attitudes towards using different transport modes, mobility levels, and concerns over public transport use based on socioeconomic and demographic differences. It suggests that household structures, social networks and perceived mobility restrictions tend to be associated with mobility patterns and practices. The paper argues that changes and continuities in mobility trends and practices due to the pandemic should be considered with broader social and economic dynamics at the household and community level. It draws key lessons learned concerning the pandemic mobilities to be transferred to future transport policy and mobility governance so that intragenerational inequalities could be mainstreamed in these policy domains.

Gentrifying with family wealth: Parental gifts and neighbourhood sorting among young adult owner-occupants

This paper assesses the role of parental gifts in neighbourhood sorting among young adult homebuyers. We make use of high-quality individual-level registry data for two large urban metropolitan areas in the Netherlands. While previous studies have shown that young adults receiving gifts purchase more expensive housing, little is known about the role of gifts in where young adults buy. Our study finds that parental gifts flow into the housing market in a spatially-uneven way. Movers supported by substantial parental gifts are more likely to enter owner-occupied housing in high-status and gentrifying urban neighbourhoods compared to movers without gifts. This study shows that this can only partially be explained by household and parental characteristics and by the uneven distribution of housing values. The remaining effect suggests that parental gifts also play a role in trade-offs regarding spatial residential decision-making. The conclusion discusses the ramifications of our findings for debates on (re)production of class and intra-generational inequalities through housing, and provides avenues for further research.

Sustainability and inequality of Taiwan's National Pension Insurance

AbstractTaiwan's National Pension Insurance (NPI) is a compulsory defined benefit pension insurance scheme. However, paying the NPI premium is not mandatory. We use the NPI administrative data of more than 489 million observations to investigate the NPI's sustainability and inequalities for various groups. We find that NPI participants pay their premiums either consistently or not at all. Although the overall willingness to pay the premiums has been declining, one group of the insured persons consistently pays, thereby maintaining the sustainability of the NPI. Intergenerational and intragenerational inequalities are both found in the NPI; however, the government's premium subsidy reduces intragenerational inequality, except for young adult males who need the NPI and regularly pay premiums. Our empirical results suggest that subsidising these young male citizens strengthens the NPI's sustainability and mitigates the intergenerational and intragenerational inequalities of the NPI.

Intragenerational inequality aversion and intergenerational equity

We study the interplay between intragenerational and intergenerational equity in an economy with two countries producing and consuming from national capital stocks. We characterize the sustainable development path that a social planner would implement to achieve intertemporal egalitarianism. If intergenerational equity is defined with respect to the global consumption of each generation regardless of its distribution between countries, consumption in the poor country should be set as low as possible to maximize investment and hasten convergence, resulting in important intragenerational inequality. When social welfare accounts for intragenerational equity, the larger the intragenerational inequality aversion (IIA), the smaller the sacrifice asked of the poor country, but the lower the sustained level of generational welfare. Along the intertemporal welfare-egalitarian path with IIA, consumption in the poor country increases, while it decreases in the rich country, resulting in a global degrowth.

Inequality within generation: Evidence from France

Intra-generational inequalities focus on the distributions within age groups. On the basis of French household income surveys carried out from 1996 to 2014, the Gini coefficient and D9/D1 inter-decile ratio were calculated so as to evaluate intra-generational income inequality before and after redistribution by the tax and welfare system. Age-Cohort-Period models were then estimated in order to disentangle age and generation effects. Over a life cycle, intra-generational inequality displays a hump-shaped curve peaking at age 55–59. This inequality is significantly lower among the youngest, whichever inequality indicator is used, and among the oldest, when measured by the inter-decile ratio. Comparison of pre- and post-redistribution income reveals that the tax and welfare system particularly reduces inequality among the young. Intra-generational inequality measured by the Gini coefficient increases significantly from one generation to the next. Measured by the inter-decile ratio, the increase is considerable for the gross income of those generations born from the 1970s on. However, the tax and welfare system has compensated for this increase, because analysis of the inter-decile ratio applied to disposable income shows no significant difference between generations.

The Social Cost of Carbon with Intragenerational Inequality Under Economic Uncertainty

The Social Cost of Carbon with Intragenerational Inequality Under Economic Uncertainty

The politics of ageing: how to get policymakers to support lifecourse policies

Abstract Background Given that there is not much evidence that ageing imperils the finance and provision of health care, why do so many policymakers act like it does? Methods We break conventional wisdom down into myths and realities, identifying the evidence against them. Results A first myth is that ageing produces unsustainable health care costs, which in turn, creates intergenerational conflict over public policy. A second myth is that older people behave as a single group, always pursuing policies that benefit themselves. The final myth is that decisions about policy are made by politicians who pander to that elderly block. The first reality is that most of the problems ascribed to inequality between generations (intergenerational equity) are actually problems of inequality within society as a whole that span across age groups (intragenerational equity). The second reality is that policies that address these broader inequalities are built on the life-course perspective, which focuses on identifying the policies which can make people happier and healthier at all ages by drawing on the context and circumstances under which aging occurs. The third reality is that it is possible to construct coalitions of politicians and interests that can develop and support sophisticated life-course policies that lessen the burdens of ageing and health on everybody. Conclusions Intergenerational inequality is not, and need not be, a significant problem for rich countries. It is substantially a product of current and past intragenerational inequality, and in fact inequality between generations often goes with inequality within generations. Intergenerational conflict is a distraction from policies that promote greater equality within and between generations, and talk of an ageing crisis is frequently just another version of longstanding arguments against public social investment from cradle to grave.

Intra-generational inequalities in young people’s political participation in Europe: The impact of social class on youth political engagement

The declining political engagement of youth is a concern in many European democracies. However, young people are also spearheading protest movements cross-nationally. While there has been research on political inequalities between generations or inter-generational differences, research looking at differences within youth itself, or inequalities between young people from different social backgrounds, particularly from a cross-national perspective, is rare. In this article, we aim to fill this gap in the literature. Using survey data from 2018 on young people aged 18–34 years, we analyse how social class background differentiates groups of young people in their political engagement and activism across nine European countries. We look at social differentiation by social class background for both political participation in a wide variety of political activities including conventional, unconventional, community and online forms of political participation, and at attitudes linked to broader political engagement, to paint a detailed picture of extant inequalities amongst young people from a cross-national perspective. The results clearly show that major class inequalities exist in political participation and broader political engagement among young people across Europe today.

How many hot days and heavy precipitation days will grandchildren experience that break the records set in their grandparents’ lives?

One of the major barriers to climate communication is that climate change is often presented to the public in such a way that impacts seem distant in time. To improve how climate change resonates with people, we propose a simple indicator: how many extreme events (hot days and heavy precipitation days) are grandchildren projected to experience that their grandparents will not experience in their lives? We analyse the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 ensemble. During grandchildren’s lifetime (2020–2100) under the shared socioeconomic pathway 5–8.5 (SSP5-8.5), in some tropical regions, they are projected to experience >1000 hot days and >5 heavy precipitation days breaking records set in their grandparents’ lifetime until 2040. These numbers of unprecedented hot days and heavy precipitation days under SSP5-8.5 are greater in countries with lower CO2 emissions and income per capita than in countries with higher CO2 emissions and income per capita. We show that not only the numbers of unprecedented hot days and heavy precipitation days but also their unevenness across countries can be significantly lowered in the SSP1-2.6 scenario, which is consistent with the 2 °C goal of the Paris Agreement. This new approach would help adults easily understand how their climate change mitigation efforts could decrease the unprecedented extreme events during youths’ lifetime and reduce the intergenerational and intragenerational inequalities regarding extreme events.

Investment in children, social security, and intragenerational risk sharing

We analyze the role of pay-as-you-go social security in intragenerational risk sharing in an overlapping-generations model with individual heterogeneity. Parents invest in their children’s education in state schools in exchange for old-age financial support. Due to random factors such as luck in the job market, children may have different earning capacities despite that they receive the same education. Without social security, a parent gets a transfer payment from her own child, so the received amount is uncertain as it depends on the child’s earnings. The social security scheme, which essentially serves to pool transfer contributions from all children and then redistribute them equally to each parent, insures parents against the risk of educational investments. Our model shows that social security stimulates educational spending, enhances labor earnings, and increases ex ante individual utility. However, it may worsen ex post intragenerational inequality of lifetime income.

Intragenerational Inequality Aversion and Intergenerational Equity

We study the interplay between intragenerational and intergenerational equity in an economy with two countries producing and consuming from national capital stocks. We characterize the sustainable development path that a social planner would implement to achieve intertemporal egalitarianism. If intergenerational equity is defined with respect to the global consumption of each generation, regardless of its distribution between countries, consumption in the poor country should be set as low as possible to maximize investment and hasten convergence, resulting in important intragenerational inequalities. When social welfare accounts for intragenerational equity, the larger the intragenerational inequality aversion (IIA), the smaller the sacrifice asked of the poor country, but the lower the sustained level of generational welfare. Along the intertemporal welfare-egalitarian path with (IIA), consumption in the poor country increases, while it decreases in the rich country, resulting in a global degrowth.

Longevity Adjustment of Retirement Age and Intragenerational Inequality

We find that segments of society that have shorter life expectancy can expect a lower income from their pensions and lifetime utility due to the longevity of other groups participating in the same pension scheme. Linking the pension age to average life expectancy magnifies the negative effect on the lifetime utility of those who suffer low longevity. Furthermore, when the income of those with greater longevity increases, those with shorter life expectancy become even worse off. Conversely, when the income of those with shorter life expectancy increases, they end up paying more into the pension scheme, which benefits those who live longer. The relative sizes of the low‐ and high‐longevity groups in the population determine the magnitude of these effects. We calibrate the model based on data on differences in life expectancy of different socioeconomic groups and find that low‐income workers suffer from a 10–13% drop in pension benefits from being forced to pay into the same scheme as high‐income workers.

(Moral) philosophy and (moral) theology can function as (behavioural) science: a methodological framework for interdisciplinary research

In this paper I present two examples in which environmental moral rules, obtained from religious precepts (e.g., the dignity of non-humans and harmony with nature in Hinduism or Buddhism, stewardship in Judaism, trusteeship and parsimony in Islam, love of neighbours in Christianity) or ethical principles (e.g., responsibility for nature, responsibility for future and current generations, and aversion to inter- and intra-generational inequality) can be matched with observed behaviours to test assumptions, insights, or both. In particular, traditional scientific tests (i.e., validation vs. calibration for reliability; out-of-sample estimations vs. numerical simulations for feasibility) and recent scientific tests (i.e., invariance under observations vs. interventions for robustness of relationships; holism vs. individualism for aggregation requirements; and causal mechanisms vs. evolutionary processes for stability of equilibria) are applied to these examples to demonstrate how moral philosophy and theology (respectively) can function as instances of empirical behavioural science (i.e., by assessing observed actions in real contexts using scientifically sound procedures). Thus, this paper provides a standardised methodology for problem-solving contexts (i.e., achieving local and global sustainability) and knowledge-practicing contexts (i.e., testing the empirical content of moral rules) to support interdisciplinary research by integrating concepts and cross-validating models from different fields of inquiry.

‘Generation Rent’ and Intergenerational Relations in The Era of Housing Financialisation

Homeownership has been in decline in a number of developed societies since the early 2000s driven, primarily, by declining entry among younger households who have been increasingly pushed into the rental sector. This trend has been associated with a growing intergenerational divide, or even conflict, and the emergence of ‘Generation Rent’. This paper explores the conditions surrounding diminishing access to owner-occupation among new households with a focus on the historic maturation of homeownership sectors, the restructuring of the political economy (financialization) around housing wealth and the inter-cohort dynamics surrounding the accumulation and transfer of housing wealth. The paper takes an international perspective drawing on evidence from two parallel, but contrasting cases: Japan and the UK. The analysis illustrates the interrelatedness of inter- and intra-generational inequalities, with the former reinforcing the latter. It also focuses on the role of families as both a moderator of generational inequity at the micro level as well as an enhancer of socioeconomic inequalities overall.

Sustainability and fairness still missing in the Greek social insurance system

Despite deep cuts in pensions recently implemented in Greece, the social insurance system is still characterized by a multitude of problems—financial, social, and organizational. These make it counterproductive in improving intragenerational inequality and intergenerational fairness, while its bureaucratic complexity makes the planning and implementation of reforms a difficult task. The aim of the paper is, first, to describe the long‐term adverse dynamics and, second, to suggest a road map of changes that ensure a fairer treatment among the various categories of pensioners as well as between them and current generation employees.

Intergenerational Discounting with Intragenerational Inequality in Consumption and the Environment

It is now established that the consumption discount rate is determined by the growth of consumption multiplied by the elasticity of marginal utility, but distributive concerns are rarely reflected in the literature. Assuming a social welfare function with inequality aversion, we consider a consumption discount rate that can be decomposed into the growth effect and the intragenerational distribution effect. The framework is then extended to include population change and inequality in the environment as an amenity in a utility with constant elasticity of substitution. Numerical examples illustrate that distributional effects turn non-negligibly negative, that may reduce consumption discount rate by 1–3% for plausible parameters, once distribution is adjusted for both population and the environment.

Inequality in the Indian Water Sector: Challenges and Policy Options

Utilizing illustrative examples based on empirical data, this article attempts to provide an indicative assessment of the growing magnitude of inequality in access to water in India. This assessment was made within an analytical framework that highlights variations across water-using sectors such as rural agriculture and urban, as well as across different sources of water such as groundwater, surface water and others. The dimensions of inequality analysed include: inequality in access to common pool groundwater resources (both inter-generational and intra-generational inequality); inequality caused by monopolistic groundwater markets; inequality in access to common property water from river catchments; inequality in access to subsidized water from public irrigation schemes; and inequality in access to water from municipal water supply systems. The article also discusses the role of major factors which contribute to the inequality in the access to water in different contexts, such as lack of well-defined water use rights, inequality in the ownership of land and other rural assets, spatial and topographical issues such as tail-end and downstream aspects, ineffective water and energy pricing policies, inadequate or poorly designed infrastructure and suboptimal water sector investment. The article concludes by providing feasible policy options and possible implementation principles to reduce inequality in access to water across sectors, sources and regions.

¿Cómo se enclasan los titulados en tiempos de crisis? Desigualdades sociales en la cohorte de treintañeros en España

This article aims to analyze the upclassing process of graduates people inSpain, with special attention to intragenerational inequality in times of crisis. The supporting data comes from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC) and the 2011 population census. Based on the cohort of thirty-year-olds with higher education, a descriptive analysis of the main variables is deployed (education, employment status, trajectories of intergenerational educational and social mobility) as well as an analysis of the recent evolution of the phenomenon of social-educational downclassing. The results not only show the existence inequalities by gender and social origin -among those individuals with a high level of education and a favourable starting position to achieve employment under equal conditions- but also an increasing trend of social-educational downclassing.

The Monetary Measurement of Flood Damage and the Valuation of the Proactive Policies in Sicily

Although floods, as well as other natural disasters, can be considered as relevant causes of intra-generational inequalities, frequent catastrophes and the resulting damage to the territory can be seen as a consequence of a generalized indifference about future. Land protection is one of the societal issues typically concerning inter-generational solidarity, involving the administrative system in the implementation of proactive policies. In the last three decades, the widespread demand for subsidiarity has made local communities more and more independent, so that attention to the long-term effects—typically concerning the territorial system as a whole at geographical scale—has been dispersed, and the proactive policies that come from the central government have become more ineffective. Regarding the case of the 2009 flood in the Fiumedinisi-Capo Peloro river basin in North Eastern Sicily, we propose an economic valuation of the land protection policy. This valuation, compared to the cost of recovery of the damaged areas, can provide helpful information on the decision-making process concerning the trade-off between reactive and proactive land policy. The economic value of land protection was calculated by means of the method of the imputed preferences, to obtain a real measure of the social territorial value from the point of view of the harmony between social system and environment. This method consists of an estimate based on the attribution of the expenditures according to the importance of the different areas. Since the value of land protection has been calculated by discounting the expenditures stream, some considerations about the economic significance of the proactive policy are referred to the role played by the social discount rate in the inter-temporal economic calculation.