Perspectives on the Future of the Sociology of Aging (2012) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Research Opportunities in the Demography of Aging
3 Research Opportunities in the Demography of Aging
Pages 32-59
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 32... ...
For the developing world, the challenge of accommodating a rapidly increasing proportion of older people can be complicated by a combination of high levels of poverty, weak infrastructure, corruption, hunger, infectious diseases, poor sanitation, limited job opportunities, or illiteracy. The demography of aging is generally associated with a set of population statistics that emphasize the compositional changes associated with the first demographic transition, a theoretical model proposed to account for the observed declines in both birth and death rates as countries shift from agricultural to industrial economies (Davis, 1945;Thompson, 1929)
|
From page 33... ...
As populations grow older, demographers are expanding their research into the processes and consequences of aging. The types of societal changes that coincided with -- some say fueled -- the decline in total fertility rates were not occurring in the developing world.
|
From page 34... ...
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)
|
From page 35... ...
In this chapter, we describe what we consider to be three promising areas of research in the demography of aging: biodemography, the changing life course, and simulations and projections. Each one can generate many research questions at different levels of social organization, and each one requires a different set of collaborations.
|
From page 36... ...
People born in the same time and place enter the population at once and create sequential developmental pathways into adulthood, while at the same time, people born at earlier times are moving into senescence and death. Research on the connection between the regular replacement of "older" cohorts by "newer" cohorts and social change contributed to the development of the life course perspective, which links life experiences to broader societal features.
|
From page 37... ...
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.
|
From page 38... ...
However, expected increases in the number or proportion of people in older age groups provide an incomplete and potentially misleading picture, since the societal implications of population aging are often framed relative to functionality, health care needs, medical expenses, disability, retirement income, and the like. 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.
|
From page 39... ...
are used to prepare budgets and to forecast program costs in the future, chronological age distributions matter. But if the goal is to estimate how demand for long-term care may change over the next 30 years, a measure that is more informative and better incorporates related processes, such as the development of disabling health conditions or the decline in cognitive functioning, is preferable.
|
From page 40... ...
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.
|
From page 41... ...
Cohort differences in the life course have been a strong focus of demographic research, which has documented changes in educational attainment, delay in entry into full-time employment, the early- and mid-20th century decline and late-20th century increases in average retirement age, changes in family structure and family formation, and changes in home ownership, household income, debts, and assets. Pension wealth (the expected value of future benefits from defined benefit and defined contribution plans)
|
From page 42... ...
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. Expanding educational opportunities was a primary goal of the 20th century and was seen as the pathway to a better and more fulfilling life.
|
From page 43... ...
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 3-12
|
From page 44... ...
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.
|
From page 45... ...
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. To the extent that the transmission of advantage and opportunity follows familial (or generational)
|
From page 46... ...
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.
|
From page 47... ...
Cohort Component Approaches Demographic rates vary by age, and these different rates may interact with population structure in determining the dimensions of future populations. Cohort component projection models apply age-specific rates to different birth cohorts, thereby producing an expected size, sex, and age structure for future populations.
|
From page 48... ...
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)
|
From page 49... ...
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)
|
From page 50... ...
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.
|
From page 51... ...
PREPUBLICATION COPY -- UNCORRECTED PROOFS properties; also central to this enterprise is the development of comparative criteria that allow us to extend our measures across time and space, across cohorts and cultures. This task requires strong conceptual grounding in cross-level linkages, careful consideration of the way these measures can be, will be, and should be used, and a sensitivity to the vectors of social change that will inevitably shift the terrain on which our measurement is based.
|
From page 52... ...
PREPUBLICATION COPY -- UNCORRECTED PROOFS FIGURE 3-1 Gains in life expectancy for selective countries.
|
From page 53... ...
PREPUBLICATION COPY -- UNCORRECTED PROOFS FIGURE 3-2 Population share with at least lower secondary education, 2005.
|
From page 54... ...
PREPUBLICATION COPY -- UNCORRECTED PROOFS FIGURE 3-3 Mean age-group–specific immediate recall scores. NOTE: Immediate recall score (values between 0 and 1, where, e.g., a score of 0.4 means being able to recall 40% of the given words)
|
From page 55... ...
PREPUBLICATION COPY -- UNCORRECTED PROOFS FIGURE 3-4 Multistate cohort component model, stylized diagram.
|
From page 56... ...
. Life Course and Social Structure.
|
From page 57... ...
. Toward a Child-Centered Life Course.
|
From page 58... ...
. Parameterized multistate population dynamics and projections.
|
From page 59... ...
Demographic Research, 25: 39-102. Thompson, W
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.