Age-Differentiated vs. Age-Integrated: Neoliberal
Policy and the Future of the Life Course
Dale Dannefer, PhD, Case Western Reserve University, Department of Sociology*
Jielu Lin, PhD, National Insititutes of Health
George Gonos, PhD, Florida International University, Center for Labor Research and Studies
*Corresponding Author: dxd79@case.edu
Jielu Lin, PhD, National Insititutes of Health
George Gonos, PhD, Florida International University, Center for Labor Research and Studies
*Corresponding Author: dxd79@case.edu
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Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for critical and constructive comments. We thank Reema Sen for valuable research and editorial assistance.
ABSTRACT
Observing the human costs for persons of all ages of the institutionalized tripartite life course (ILC) characterizing advanced postindustrial societies, gerontological pioneer Matilda White Riley proposed an “age-integrated” alternative that would support a more balanced engagement with education, work, and leisure (i.e., retirement) across the life course. Without denying the kinds of manifest benefits that the ILC has provided to modern citizens (notably enhanced educational opportunities and retirement support), Riley rightly pointed out the opportunities lost due to the restrictions imposed by the normative age-graded or age-differentiated model of the “three-box” life course. However, both the age-segmented ILC and the age-integrated alternative envisioned by Riley have presupposed the broad floor of support of essential components of the life course (i.e., education, work and retirement/leisure) provided by the post-World War II social contract. We demonstrate that this floor of support has been dangerously eroded by the neoliberal turn in social policy, which has undermined that social contract. Ironically, the ideas of a more individualized or “flexible” life course are often co-opted to legitimate the off-loading of risk to individuals that is integral to neoliberal policy. In reality, viable implementation of Riley’s proposed age-integrated model would require a rejection of such policies and a renewed public commitment at least equal to the support that undergirded the institutionalized life course. We detail some dimensions of neoliberalism’s impact on the life course, and we suggest the types of policy changes that could rebuild support for the institution of the life course, with special attention to Riley’s age-integrated model and its potential to advance human interests.
Keywords: flexible work schedules, institutionalized life course, social contract, structural lag
Matilda White Riley, a pioneering founder of the sociology of age and the life course as a field of study, was also herself a model of active aging, continuing to work well past her 90th birthday (see, e.g, Dannefer, Uhlenberg, Foner & Abeles, 2005; Dannefer, Foner & Hess, 2000). Thus, she not only was a leading expert on aging, but herself experienced firsthand the “gains and losses” (Baltes, 1987), the opportunities and challenges that come with age, including the socially imposed challenges associated with ageism and age segregation and discrimination.
A “FUNCTIONAL FAILURE” OF SOCIAL ORDER
Riley was a longtime colleague and close personal friend of both Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, so it should not be surprising that her approach to sociological analysis was framed by the paradigmatic assumptions of American structural-functionalism, of which Parsons and Merton were primary architects. Structural-functionalism offered a rather upbeat and hopeful narrative of society and social progress that resonated with the economic and educational expansion of the post-WWII period and treated problems such as poverty and racism as aberrations that could surely be solved with continued societal progress, and with just a little more time.
Thus, it is especially telling that Riley’s last book, coauthored in 1994 with Anne Foner and psychologist Robert Kahn, was titled Age and Structural Lag: Society’s Failure to Provide Meaningful Opportunities in Work, Family and Leisure (emphasis ours). The idea of a “societal failure” is quite at odds with Parsonian functionalism, which regards any society that manages to survive and flourish as successful, and in the case of the U.S. and the post-WWII West more generally, as becoming more so all the time (e.g., Parsons, 1972). To call out a “societal failure” within this framework implies that the failure in question must indeed be consequential, and one that requires systematic attention to be redressed. What is this “failure”? It is the societal imposition of restricted, age-graded activity routines that squelch human possibilities:
[T]he major responsibilities for work and family are still crowded into what are now the middle years of long life, while education is primarily reserved for the young, and leisure and free time are disproportionately allocated to the later years . . . Our failure to match in social structures the rapid gains in longevity, health and style of life has had the unintended consequences of creating a poor fit between social institutions and people’s capabilities and responsibilities at every age (Riley, Kahn & Foner, 1994, p. 2).
Elaborating the problem further, Riley & Riley note:
[T]he unprecedented increases in longevity . . . mean that people spend one-third of their adult lives in retirement (which) . . . consists largely of “unstructured time”. . . While young and middle-aged adults, especially women, are deprived of free time by the doubly demanding roles of work and family, older people tend to be surfeited with it. Yet there are few normative expectations to give meaning to this time or to their lives, and few employment or other opportunities to participate with younger people in the mainstream activities of society (Riley & Riley, 1994, p. 16).
Thus, as a result of increasing longevity, “lives have been drastically altered . . . but numerous inflexible social structures, roles and norms have lagged behind” (Riley & Riley, 1994, p. 16). Riley’s critical argument is further underscored by the fact that midlife “work” actually includes “the subcontracting of work” from employers to families (Kanter, 1977) and other forms of unpaid domestic labor, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women.
This general situation is what Riley terms “structural lag,” which she appraises as a general problem, and one that is especially relevant to the situation of elders: “[S]tructural lag and the need for change are currently most conspicuous for older people, because of their protracted longevity, their increasing numbers in the population, and—save for the disadvantaged minority—their remarkably good health and effective functioning” (1994, p. 18). Similar concerns regarding the potential human costs and counter-productivity of the “three-box” life course has also been expressed by scholars working from other theoretical traditions (e.g., Dannefer, 1989; Phillipson, 2002).
Taking this challenge as a point of departure, this article addresses three interrelated problems concerning the structuring of the life course. The first is to consider the modern life course as a general, socially structured phenomenon that was established in the 20th Century and within it, more specifically, the implications of two contrasting models that Riley counterposed, the “age-differentiated” and “age-integrated” models. The second issue, yet more fundamental, is to examine how the life course as a societal construct and institution has itself come under assault—an assault that encompasses both of these alternative models. Finally, we consider the possibilities for advanced industrial societies to develop and support the personal control and flexibility envisioned in Riley’s age-integrated model as we enter the third decade of the new century.
MODELS OF THE LIFE COURSE: VARIATIONS ON A MODERN THEME
Based on her notion of structural lag and her observations regarding the often-costly strains and restrictions imposed upon the life course by the tripartite “age-differentiated” approach, Riley counterposes to it what she terms an “age-integrated” model of life-course organization (see Figure 1). This straightforward diagram makes explicit the possibility of conceiving education, work and leisure as spread across the life course, rather than occurring in age-segmented, sequential mass doses.
ABSTRACT
Observing the human costs for persons of all ages of the institutionalized tripartite life course (ILC) characterizing advanced postindustrial societies, gerontological pioneer Matilda White Riley proposed an “age-integrated” alternative that would support a more balanced engagement with education, work, and leisure (i.e., retirement) across the life course. Without denying the kinds of manifest benefits that the ILC has provided to modern citizens (notably enhanced educational opportunities and retirement support), Riley rightly pointed out the opportunities lost due to the restrictions imposed by the normative age-graded or age-differentiated model of the “three-box” life course. However, both the age-segmented ILC and the age-integrated alternative envisioned by Riley have presupposed the broad floor of support of essential components of the life course (i.e., education, work and retirement/leisure) provided by the post-World War II social contract. We demonstrate that this floor of support has been dangerously eroded by the neoliberal turn in social policy, which has undermined that social contract. Ironically, the ideas of a more individualized or “flexible” life course are often co-opted to legitimate the off-loading of risk to individuals that is integral to neoliberal policy. In reality, viable implementation of Riley’s proposed age-integrated model would require a rejection of such policies and a renewed public commitment at least equal to the support that undergirded the institutionalized life course. We detail some dimensions of neoliberalism’s impact on the life course, and we suggest the types of policy changes that could rebuild support for the institution of the life course, with special attention to Riley’s age-integrated model and its potential to advance human interests.
Keywords: flexible work schedules, institutionalized life course, social contract, structural lag
Matilda White Riley, a pioneering founder of the sociology of age and the life course as a field of study, was also herself a model of active aging, continuing to work well past her 90th birthday (see, e.g, Dannefer, Uhlenberg, Foner & Abeles, 2005; Dannefer, Foner & Hess, 2000). Thus, she not only was a leading expert on aging, but herself experienced firsthand the “gains and losses” (Baltes, 1987), the opportunities and challenges that come with age, including the socially imposed challenges associated with ageism and age segregation and discrimination.
A “FUNCTIONAL FAILURE” OF SOCIAL ORDER
Riley was a longtime colleague and close personal friend of both Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, so it should not be surprising that her approach to sociological analysis was framed by the paradigmatic assumptions of American structural-functionalism, of which Parsons and Merton were primary architects. Structural-functionalism offered a rather upbeat and hopeful narrative of society and social progress that resonated with the economic and educational expansion of the post-WWII period and treated problems such as poverty and racism as aberrations that could surely be solved with continued societal progress, and with just a little more time.
Thus, it is especially telling that Riley’s last book, coauthored in 1994 with Anne Foner and psychologist Robert Kahn, was titled Age and Structural Lag: Society’s Failure to Provide Meaningful Opportunities in Work, Family and Leisure (emphasis ours). The idea of a “societal failure” is quite at odds with Parsonian functionalism, which regards any society that manages to survive and flourish as successful, and in the case of the U.S. and the post-WWII West more generally, as becoming more so all the time (e.g., Parsons, 1972). To call out a “societal failure” within this framework implies that the failure in question must indeed be consequential, and one that requires systematic attention to be redressed. What is this “failure”? It is the societal imposition of restricted, age-graded activity routines that squelch human possibilities:
[T]he major responsibilities for work and family are still crowded into what are now the middle years of long life, while education is primarily reserved for the young, and leisure and free time are disproportionately allocated to the later years . . . Our failure to match in social structures the rapid gains in longevity, health and style of life has had the unintended consequences of creating a poor fit between social institutions and people’s capabilities and responsibilities at every age (Riley, Kahn & Foner, 1994, p. 2).
Elaborating the problem further, Riley & Riley note:
[T]he unprecedented increases in longevity . . . mean that people spend one-third of their adult lives in retirement (which) . . . consists largely of “unstructured time”. . . While young and middle-aged adults, especially women, are deprived of free time by the doubly demanding roles of work and family, older people tend to be surfeited with it. Yet there are few normative expectations to give meaning to this time or to their lives, and few employment or other opportunities to participate with younger people in the mainstream activities of society (Riley & Riley, 1994, p. 16).
Thus, as a result of increasing longevity, “lives have been drastically altered . . . but numerous inflexible social structures, roles and norms have lagged behind” (Riley & Riley, 1994, p. 16). Riley’s critical argument is further underscored by the fact that midlife “work” actually includes “the subcontracting of work” from employers to families (Kanter, 1977) and other forms of unpaid domestic labor, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women.
This general situation is what Riley terms “structural lag,” which she appraises as a general problem, and one that is especially relevant to the situation of elders: “[S]tructural lag and the need for change are currently most conspicuous for older people, because of their protracted longevity, their increasing numbers in the population, and—save for the disadvantaged minority—their remarkably good health and effective functioning” (1994, p. 18). Similar concerns regarding the potential human costs and counter-productivity of the “three-box” life course has also been expressed by scholars working from other theoretical traditions (e.g., Dannefer, 1989; Phillipson, 2002).
Taking this challenge as a point of departure, this article addresses three interrelated problems concerning the structuring of the life course. The first is to consider the modern life course as a general, socially structured phenomenon that was established in the 20th Century and within it, more specifically, the implications of two contrasting models that Riley counterposed, the “age-differentiated” and “age-integrated” models. The second issue, yet more fundamental, is to examine how the life course as a societal construct and institution has itself come under assault—an assault that encompasses both of these alternative models. Finally, we consider the possibilities for advanced industrial societies to develop and support the personal control and flexibility envisioned in Riley’s age-integrated model as we enter the third decade of the new century.
MODELS OF THE LIFE COURSE: VARIATIONS ON A MODERN THEME
Based on her notion of structural lag and her observations regarding the often-costly strains and restrictions imposed upon the life course by the tripartite “age-differentiated” approach, Riley counterposes to it what she terms an “age-integrated” model of life-course organization (see Figure 1). This straightforward diagram makes explicit the possibility of conceiving education, work and leisure as spread across the life course, rather than occurring in age-segmented, sequential mass doses.
Figure 1. Age-Differentiated and Age-Integrated Models of the Life Course (from Riley & Riley, 1994, p. 26).
Riley’s critique notwithstanding, some social scientists have presented a more positive view of the education/work/retirement sequence that she terms the “age-differentiated” model. In particular, Martin Kohli, who has observed that this model of the life course is so established and integral to the modern social order that it is appropriately considered a social institution, notes its benefits. He suggests that the social institution of the life course is key to solving practical and existential problems for individuals, organizing their lives experientially and biographically, providing economic and social security, and providing some sense of orderliness and even of meaning (Kohli, 2007).
With respect to social policy, it is worth noting that the institutionalized, tripartite life course (ILC) is itself largely the product of deliberate, age-graded policy innovations, including policies establishing mass, free public education and those providing state support for work exit and retirement (via public as well as private pension programs, and in some cases, age-based mandatory retirement). These social innovations have of course been integral to the development of modern forms of social organization and the modern state. They provide the societal framework within which individuals approach later life and have major implications for the nature of experience in old age. Indeed, for advanced industrial societies generally such innovations have arguably contributed importantly to positive changes in the experience of the later years and old age, via the economic benefits of education, and via the reduction of old-age poverty and concomitant improvements in health, longevity and quality of life in the later years. These are palpable benefits of the life course as a social institution.
Yet despite such benefits, Riley’s critique makes clear that the “three-box” age-differentiated paradigm is not without its own very substantial problems. In addition to the costs she recounts at the level of individual experience, the age-based segmentation of experience is also responsible for numerous demographic strains. At the base of the tripartite organization of the life course can be laid some of the most pressing social and economic challenges faced by advanced postindustrial societies, notably the old-age dependency ratio (Hammer, Prskawetz & Freund, 2015; Ingham, Chirijevskis & Carmichael, 2009) and strains placed on age-graded education (Gradstein & Kaganovich, 2004) and on work, healthcare, and other institutions as disparately sized cohorts make their way through the life course (Anderson & Hussey, 2000; Uhlenberg, 1992). The much-debated “generation wars” stoked by advocates of “Generational Equity” and related movements, are also predicated on the assumption of a tripartite division and the back-loading of years of leisure (see, e.g., Quadagno, 1989; Walker, 2013). Similarly, the tripartite structure has been an essential premise for arguments used to justify Social Security privatization (e.g., that claiming the shorter life expectancy of black persons meant that privatization would benefit them [see Tanner, 2001]).
Beyond such macro-level considerations, other scholars have, consistent with Riley’s concerns, analyzed the psychologically and relationally adverse consequences of social arrangements that encourage and sustain age-segregated patterns of social interaction in the life course (e.g., Hagestad & Uhlenberg, 2005; 2006).
Especially in professional human services domains such as counseling and human development, the human costs of the “three-box” life course and the promise of a more open and less scripted approach to aging had received considerable attention, even before the time of Riley’s writing (e.g., Best, 1980, Bolles, 1978; Neugarten, 1968; Sarason, 1977; Whitbourne, 1985). Increasingly, through the 1970s and 1980s, the oppressiveness of rigid age-graded expectations became an existential preoccupation.
Related to this tension between the age-differentiated and age-integrated models, Riley and associates (1994, p. 3) detail a range of policy issues and questions prompted by the problem of structural lag, which were being discussed at the time of their writing. These include:
Such critique and such questions notwithstanding, when viewed in historical perspective, the institutionalized age-differentiated life course clearly represented an advance over what came before. It provided many citizens with universal K-12 schooling and expanding educational opportunities, stable employment and, after the working years, economically supported free time. It must be kept in mind that such benefits did not extend in the same form to all segments of the population; African-Americans and other minorities were in many ways deliberately shortchanged (see, e.g., Poole, 2006). Yet compared to the more unpredictable, contingent and often precarious biographical patterns that preceded it (see, e.g, Achenbaum, 1978; 2009; Chudacoff, 1989; Kett, 1977), it provided stability, coherence and even existential meaning to the experience of aging, arguably with great benefit, even for many disadvantaged minorities (Katznelson, 2005: Kohli, 2007). Yet Riley contended that this tripartite, age-graded configuration does not represent the last word on the subject, any more than the automobiles and aircraft of the mid-20th century were the last word in transportation technology. Riley and colleagues offer a progressive view that builds on the premise of a publicly supported floor of security and enhances human prospects.
Few would deny the appeal of Riley’s age-integrated model. For example, removing age-based restrictions to participating in work could offer greater control to individuals while also contributing to societal productivity and welfare (Uhlenberg, 1988; 1996), and providing more support for midlife education or specialized training could enhance human capital and productivity. However, the use of policy to provide support for a more flexibly configured life course, relying less on chronological age as an organizing criterion, has yet to be pursued beyond a few fragmentary initiatives (e.g., Bildungsurlaub in Germany, or in Austria, or “career break” policies in Belgium and other EU countries or “time credit” systems [Phillipson, 2002, p. 24]). Given the potential advantages of the age-integrated life course, the dearth of attention to policy initiatives that would provide support for age-integrated alternatives in the U.S. is unfortunate. While the elimination of mandatory retirement does comprise an important step in such a direction for older citizens, that step does nothing to support any form of educational or other life-course innovation for those in the middle years. It also does nothing to provide support for older persons who may have worked hard all their lives yet are economically compelled to continue working (Burkert & Hochfellner, 2017). Thus, it may be seen as a mixed blessing. At a conference panel in the 1990s, representatives of the AARP and the union-based National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC) were each asked to identify the most significant advance in U.S. ageing policy. For the AARP, it was “eliminating mandatory retirement”; for the NCSC, it was “lowering the retirement age to 62” (Hudson, 2012; see also Phillipson, 2002). As Rob Hudson noted in relaying this exchange, when you have spent your days slapping hubcaps on Chevies, “mandatory retirement” is no threat; it is more likely welcomed. In fact, however, the share of people 65 and older who are employed is now higher than in over half a century (Morrissey, 2016).
THE LIFE COURSE AS AN INSTITUTION: TENSIONS AND POSSIBILITIES
Although it would be heartening to see more public discussion and support for such issues, more immediate challenges that confront the very notion of the life-course construct as a modern institution must be addressed. Indeed, over the past several decades the very idea of the life course as a general, public provision of biographical stability and support has come under assault, so that both sides of the debate face a common threat of an erosion of commitment to the economic viability of the key premises and components of life-course security.
This assault can be seen in the constant rhetoric that retirement, age-graded or not, can no longer be “afforded,” as some corporate and political leaders have maintained (e.g., Petersen, 1999), creating pressure to increase retirement age and reduce pension benefits (Phillipson, 2002). In the USA and elsewhere, it is also evident in the breach of promised pensions and in the shift from defined benefits to defined contributions (Quadagno & Street, 2006). The shift from traditional defined-benefit pensions to retirement savings accounts (defined contribution plans) has widened retirement disparities. In 2013, nearly nine in 10 families in the top income quintile had retirement account savings, compared with fewer than one in 10 families in the bottom income quintile. Most families in the bottom half of the income distribution have no retirement account savings at all (e.g., Russell, 2014; Morrissey, 2016). One effect of these changes can be seen in the growth of inequality and precarity among older persons (Crystal et al., 2017; Phillipson, 2013; Shuey & O’Rand 2004; Weller & Newman, 2020), made palpable by their visible presence as Wal-Mart greeters and grocery-store baggers. Declining support for the life course is no less evident early in the life course, where funding for public education has been ratcheted down in recent years (Leachman, Masterson & Figueroa, 2017), and where student loan debt is daunting if not disastrous for young adults trying to launch a career.
This constellation of assaults has affected the immediate practical viability both of the “age-differentiated” institutionalized life course and of the possibility of implementing Riley’s “age-integrated” alternative, because both of these approaches—despite their differences—share a crucially important, common premise. This premise is the existence of a sturdy floor of social and economic support for the lives of individual citizens, which renders possible the idea of a reasonable level of general social stability and economic security as a context for planning a biography, or at least the next steps in it.
The premise of a stable foundation for individual economic survival seemed well established at the time the age-integrated life course was first articulated in the 1970s. Especially during the quarter century from 1947 to 1973, in the wake of the New Deal and riding the tide of postwar prosperity, a heightened sense of the possibilities of orderly and predictable life planning was increasingly undergirded by a strong labor market, and by the assumption that those “glory days” of the post-World War II U.S. social contract would remain in place (Bluestone & Bluestone,1992). The reality of a coherent, largely scripted biography following the age-differentiated model was facilitated by a broad array of intersecting institutions—private as well as public.
It is important to understand how institutions and policies in the post-World War II period were customized to support the institutionalization of the life course. Importantly, the age-differentiated life course trajectory was undergirded by internal labor markets (ILMs) in the workplace. ILMs represented a trade-off. In exchange for the employer’s offer of long-term job security, employees agreed to sacrifice a portion of their earned wages during the early phases of their tenure in exchange for the promise of a stable, decent retirement after a prolonged period (typically 30 years) of service—in the form of the (now nearly-extinct) defined-benefit retirement pensions. Along the way, workers were incentivized to remain productive by the employer’s provision of training, rising wages and benefits, and regular promotion opportunities (Stone, 2004, p. 51-63; Adams & Heywood, 2007; Zwick, 2012). During this period, moreover, wages were steadily increasing and federal legislation supported a standard 40-hour work week, which assisted workers in maintaining a modicum of family life.
In addition to the ILM, state policies, including the GI Bill and Social Security, offered (to white citizens, at least) a high level of public investment in young adulthood in the form of support for college education and homeowner loans, as well as a floor of financial protection against the hazards in later life. In short, economic prosperity, combined with specific public policies, created the institutional uniformity of age-differentiated life course trajectories.
But while ILMs could make the retirement years materially comfortable, they also carried additional adverse consequences that would later become the focus of Riley’s and other critiques of the ILC. Before reaching retirement, blue-collar workers faced the cumulative disadvantage of long years of often deadening and debilitating work (Hayward, Friedman & Chen, 1996; Kelly, 2000; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Lin, Brennan & Verma, 2014; Neff, 1985). And given the lack of a valued role for retirees in the age-differentiated model, blue- and white-collar workers alike often experienced less than fully satisfying lives in their senior years. Moreover, as is becoming increasingly well known, the benefits of many of these aspects of the social contract, including Social Security, retirement pensions, college tuition benefits, and homeowner loans, were never extended to all segments. Minorities, women, those without jobs in the “core” economy, and many segments of the young and old populations, were conspicuously excluded (Dannefer, Gilbert & Han, 2020; Katznelson, 2005; Rothstein, 2017). The relative stability and material comfort in retirement were in many cases not conferred upon members of those groups.
Despite such significant shortcomings, the institutionalized life course nevertheless provided, as Martin Kohli emphasizes, an expanding base of economic security and a sense of biographical predictability that anchored work, family and personal life for large segments of the population and, for better or worse, created a defined public narrative of the life course. Although the issue of inclusion/exclusion remained to be adequately addressed (Kohli, 2008), the ILC represented an arrangement that scores of millions of workers and families eagerly embraced, depicted with everyday descriptors like “company man” or “set up for life.”
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZED LIFE COURSE
In the late 1970s, the rising dominance of neoliberal policies began to undermine the floor of social and economic support that had made the age-differentiated life course possible. At the core of neoliberalism is a stated belief in free markets as a guide to policy. Under its influence, governments have championed the deregulation of business, and of labor and financial markets, the privatization of public services, steep reductions in taxes, and cuts in social welfare programs (Harvey, 2005; Saad-Filho & Johnston, 2005).
Launched by shifts in political leadership and policy in the U.S., Britain, and China, the impact of neoliberalism was not long in coming. Neoliberal policies entailed a reduced commitment to the broad-based, publicly supported social contract across the central domains of education, work life, and retirement that had been expanded over prior decades. For many individuals and families, the premises of individual economic security and social stability that provided the foundation of the life course as a socially supported institution began to erode palpably. The “glory days” of well-paying and seemingly secure industrial and corporate jobs receded with surprising rapidity, replaced by uncertainty and anxiety (Bluestone & Bluestone, 1992, p. 60-106; Standing, 2011). With neoliberal ideologies justifying the subjugation of citizen welfare to corporate competitiveness, citizens became preoccupied with the precarity of life-course security.
A concomitant of this change of direction can be seen in the sharp upward redistribution of the nation’s income occurring through the same time period. One indication is displayed in Figure 2, which traces the relationship between productivity and wages since 1948. As can be clearly seen, the wages of nonsupervisory workers grew in tandem with productivity until the mid-1970s, after which point wages flattened. The result, as economists at the Economic Policy Institute conclude, is “an overall shift in how much of the income in the economy is received by workers in wages and benefits, and how much is received by owners.” Thus, as they further explain, “[R]ising productivity in recent decades provided the potential for a substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority of workers” (Bivens & Mishel, 2015, our emphasis). However, “this potential was squandered,” as nearly all of the added value generated by increased productivity went to corporate owners, rather than workers, fueling the growth of extreme inequality.
Figure 2 makes clear that these two measures tracked closely until the mid 1970s, when wage growth leveled off, creating a growing, long-term divergence. A comprehensive analysis of the factors accounting for this divergence lie beyond the scope of this paper. However, one significant set of such factors responsible for this pattern derives from pressures to reduce labor costs and regulatory oversight, which led to the mass exportation of manufacturing and other jobs from the U.S. and other advanced societies. This practice not only cost millions of jobs, but also created downward wage pressure on domestic workers, and weakened unions. Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, epitomized this logic when he described as a corporate ideal, “...having every plant you own on a barge” (Palley, 2007) that could quickly relocate to wherever a new source of cheap labor might be found—a telling vision of the implications of the logic of capital for anything like a social contract, and of the global “race to the bottom” for workers’ pay.
With respect to social policy, it is worth noting that the institutionalized, tripartite life course (ILC) is itself largely the product of deliberate, age-graded policy innovations, including policies establishing mass, free public education and those providing state support for work exit and retirement (via public as well as private pension programs, and in some cases, age-based mandatory retirement). These social innovations have of course been integral to the development of modern forms of social organization and the modern state. They provide the societal framework within which individuals approach later life and have major implications for the nature of experience in old age. Indeed, for advanced industrial societies generally such innovations have arguably contributed importantly to positive changes in the experience of the later years and old age, via the economic benefits of education, and via the reduction of old-age poverty and concomitant improvements in health, longevity and quality of life in the later years. These are palpable benefits of the life course as a social institution.
Yet despite such benefits, Riley’s critique makes clear that the “three-box” age-differentiated paradigm is not without its own very substantial problems. In addition to the costs she recounts at the level of individual experience, the age-based segmentation of experience is also responsible for numerous demographic strains. At the base of the tripartite organization of the life course can be laid some of the most pressing social and economic challenges faced by advanced postindustrial societies, notably the old-age dependency ratio (Hammer, Prskawetz & Freund, 2015; Ingham, Chirijevskis & Carmichael, 2009) and strains placed on age-graded education (Gradstein & Kaganovich, 2004) and on work, healthcare, and other institutions as disparately sized cohorts make their way through the life course (Anderson & Hussey, 2000; Uhlenberg, 1992). The much-debated “generation wars” stoked by advocates of “Generational Equity” and related movements, are also predicated on the assumption of a tripartite division and the back-loading of years of leisure (see, e.g., Quadagno, 1989; Walker, 2013). Similarly, the tripartite structure has been an essential premise for arguments used to justify Social Security privatization (e.g., that claiming the shorter life expectancy of black persons meant that privatization would benefit them [see Tanner, 2001]).
Beyond such macro-level considerations, other scholars have, consistent with Riley’s concerns, analyzed the psychologically and relationally adverse consequences of social arrangements that encourage and sustain age-segregated patterns of social interaction in the life course (e.g., Hagestad & Uhlenberg, 2005; 2006).
Especially in professional human services domains such as counseling and human development, the human costs of the “three-box” life course and the promise of a more open and less scripted approach to aging had received considerable attention, even before the time of Riley’s writing (e.g., Best, 1980, Bolles, 1978; Neugarten, 1968; Sarason, 1977; Whitbourne, 1985). Increasingly, through the 1970s and 1980s, the oppressiveness of rigid age-graded expectations became an existential preoccupation.
Related to this tension between the age-differentiated and age-integrated models, Riley and associates (1994, p. 3) detail a range of policy issues and questions prompted by the problem of structural lag, which were being discussed at the time of their writing. These include:
- Whether to spread work more evenly over the life course, by providing longer vacations, flexible work hours, incentives for midlife switching to new careers
- Whether to reduce heavy transfer payments by the middle aged and to require that both the old and the young become more self-supporting
- How to determine the appropriate age for retirement
- How to design communities, housing, shopping centers, roadways to meet human needs that are changing over the life course.
Such critique and such questions notwithstanding, when viewed in historical perspective, the institutionalized age-differentiated life course clearly represented an advance over what came before. It provided many citizens with universal K-12 schooling and expanding educational opportunities, stable employment and, after the working years, economically supported free time. It must be kept in mind that such benefits did not extend in the same form to all segments of the population; African-Americans and other minorities were in many ways deliberately shortchanged (see, e.g., Poole, 2006). Yet compared to the more unpredictable, contingent and often precarious biographical patterns that preceded it (see, e.g, Achenbaum, 1978; 2009; Chudacoff, 1989; Kett, 1977), it provided stability, coherence and even existential meaning to the experience of aging, arguably with great benefit, even for many disadvantaged minorities (Katznelson, 2005: Kohli, 2007). Yet Riley contended that this tripartite, age-graded configuration does not represent the last word on the subject, any more than the automobiles and aircraft of the mid-20th century were the last word in transportation technology. Riley and colleagues offer a progressive view that builds on the premise of a publicly supported floor of security and enhances human prospects.
Few would deny the appeal of Riley’s age-integrated model. For example, removing age-based restrictions to participating in work could offer greater control to individuals while also contributing to societal productivity and welfare (Uhlenberg, 1988; 1996), and providing more support for midlife education or specialized training could enhance human capital and productivity. However, the use of policy to provide support for a more flexibly configured life course, relying less on chronological age as an organizing criterion, has yet to be pursued beyond a few fragmentary initiatives (e.g., Bildungsurlaub in Germany, or in Austria, or “career break” policies in Belgium and other EU countries or “time credit” systems [Phillipson, 2002, p. 24]). Given the potential advantages of the age-integrated life course, the dearth of attention to policy initiatives that would provide support for age-integrated alternatives in the U.S. is unfortunate. While the elimination of mandatory retirement does comprise an important step in such a direction for older citizens, that step does nothing to support any form of educational or other life-course innovation for those in the middle years. It also does nothing to provide support for older persons who may have worked hard all their lives yet are economically compelled to continue working (Burkert & Hochfellner, 2017). Thus, it may be seen as a mixed blessing. At a conference panel in the 1990s, representatives of the AARP and the union-based National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC) were each asked to identify the most significant advance in U.S. ageing policy. For the AARP, it was “eliminating mandatory retirement”; for the NCSC, it was “lowering the retirement age to 62” (Hudson, 2012; see also Phillipson, 2002). As Rob Hudson noted in relaying this exchange, when you have spent your days slapping hubcaps on Chevies, “mandatory retirement” is no threat; it is more likely welcomed. In fact, however, the share of people 65 and older who are employed is now higher than in over half a century (Morrissey, 2016).
THE LIFE COURSE AS AN INSTITUTION: TENSIONS AND POSSIBILITIES
Although it would be heartening to see more public discussion and support for such issues, more immediate challenges that confront the very notion of the life-course construct as a modern institution must be addressed. Indeed, over the past several decades the very idea of the life course as a general, public provision of biographical stability and support has come under assault, so that both sides of the debate face a common threat of an erosion of commitment to the economic viability of the key premises and components of life-course security.
This assault can be seen in the constant rhetoric that retirement, age-graded or not, can no longer be “afforded,” as some corporate and political leaders have maintained (e.g., Petersen, 1999), creating pressure to increase retirement age and reduce pension benefits (Phillipson, 2002). In the USA and elsewhere, it is also evident in the breach of promised pensions and in the shift from defined benefits to defined contributions (Quadagno & Street, 2006). The shift from traditional defined-benefit pensions to retirement savings accounts (defined contribution plans) has widened retirement disparities. In 2013, nearly nine in 10 families in the top income quintile had retirement account savings, compared with fewer than one in 10 families in the bottom income quintile. Most families in the bottom half of the income distribution have no retirement account savings at all (e.g., Russell, 2014; Morrissey, 2016). One effect of these changes can be seen in the growth of inequality and precarity among older persons (Crystal et al., 2017; Phillipson, 2013; Shuey & O’Rand 2004; Weller & Newman, 2020), made palpable by their visible presence as Wal-Mart greeters and grocery-store baggers. Declining support for the life course is no less evident early in the life course, where funding for public education has been ratcheted down in recent years (Leachman, Masterson & Figueroa, 2017), and where student loan debt is daunting if not disastrous for young adults trying to launch a career.
This constellation of assaults has affected the immediate practical viability both of the “age-differentiated” institutionalized life course and of the possibility of implementing Riley’s “age-integrated” alternative, because both of these approaches—despite their differences—share a crucially important, common premise. This premise is the existence of a sturdy floor of social and economic support for the lives of individual citizens, which renders possible the idea of a reasonable level of general social stability and economic security as a context for planning a biography, or at least the next steps in it.
The premise of a stable foundation for individual economic survival seemed well established at the time the age-integrated life course was first articulated in the 1970s. Especially during the quarter century from 1947 to 1973, in the wake of the New Deal and riding the tide of postwar prosperity, a heightened sense of the possibilities of orderly and predictable life planning was increasingly undergirded by a strong labor market, and by the assumption that those “glory days” of the post-World War II U.S. social contract would remain in place (Bluestone & Bluestone,1992). The reality of a coherent, largely scripted biography following the age-differentiated model was facilitated by a broad array of intersecting institutions—private as well as public.
It is important to understand how institutions and policies in the post-World War II period were customized to support the institutionalization of the life course. Importantly, the age-differentiated life course trajectory was undergirded by internal labor markets (ILMs) in the workplace. ILMs represented a trade-off. In exchange for the employer’s offer of long-term job security, employees agreed to sacrifice a portion of their earned wages during the early phases of their tenure in exchange for the promise of a stable, decent retirement after a prolonged period (typically 30 years) of service—in the form of the (now nearly-extinct) defined-benefit retirement pensions. Along the way, workers were incentivized to remain productive by the employer’s provision of training, rising wages and benefits, and regular promotion opportunities (Stone, 2004, p. 51-63; Adams & Heywood, 2007; Zwick, 2012). During this period, moreover, wages were steadily increasing and federal legislation supported a standard 40-hour work week, which assisted workers in maintaining a modicum of family life.
In addition to the ILM, state policies, including the GI Bill and Social Security, offered (to white citizens, at least) a high level of public investment in young adulthood in the form of support for college education and homeowner loans, as well as a floor of financial protection against the hazards in later life. In short, economic prosperity, combined with specific public policies, created the institutional uniformity of age-differentiated life course trajectories.
But while ILMs could make the retirement years materially comfortable, they also carried additional adverse consequences that would later become the focus of Riley’s and other critiques of the ILC. Before reaching retirement, blue-collar workers faced the cumulative disadvantage of long years of often deadening and debilitating work (Hayward, Friedman & Chen, 1996; Kelly, 2000; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Lin, Brennan & Verma, 2014; Neff, 1985). And given the lack of a valued role for retirees in the age-differentiated model, blue- and white-collar workers alike often experienced less than fully satisfying lives in their senior years. Moreover, as is becoming increasingly well known, the benefits of many of these aspects of the social contract, including Social Security, retirement pensions, college tuition benefits, and homeowner loans, were never extended to all segments. Minorities, women, those without jobs in the “core” economy, and many segments of the young and old populations, were conspicuously excluded (Dannefer, Gilbert & Han, 2020; Katznelson, 2005; Rothstein, 2017). The relative stability and material comfort in retirement were in many cases not conferred upon members of those groups.
Despite such significant shortcomings, the institutionalized life course nevertheless provided, as Martin Kohli emphasizes, an expanding base of economic security and a sense of biographical predictability that anchored work, family and personal life for large segments of the population and, for better or worse, created a defined public narrative of the life course. Although the issue of inclusion/exclusion remained to be adequately addressed (Kohli, 2008), the ILC represented an arrangement that scores of millions of workers and families eagerly embraced, depicted with everyday descriptors like “company man” or “set up for life.”
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZED LIFE COURSE
In the late 1970s, the rising dominance of neoliberal policies began to undermine the floor of social and economic support that had made the age-differentiated life course possible. At the core of neoliberalism is a stated belief in free markets as a guide to policy. Under its influence, governments have championed the deregulation of business, and of labor and financial markets, the privatization of public services, steep reductions in taxes, and cuts in social welfare programs (Harvey, 2005; Saad-Filho & Johnston, 2005).
Launched by shifts in political leadership and policy in the U.S., Britain, and China, the impact of neoliberalism was not long in coming. Neoliberal policies entailed a reduced commitment to the broad-based, publicly supported social contract across the central domains of education, work life, and retirement that had been expanded over prior decades. For many individuals and families, the premises of individual economic security and social stability that provided the foundation of the life course as a socially supported institution began to erode palpably. The “glory days” of well-paying and seemingly secure industrial and corporate jobs receded with surprising rapidity, replaced by uncertainty and anxiety (Bluestone & Bluestone, 1992, p. 60-106; Standing, 2011). With neoliberal ideologies justifying the subjugation of citizen welfare to corporate competitiveness, citizens became preoccupied with the precarity of life-course security.
A concomitant of this change of direction can be seen in the sharp upward redistribution of the nation’s income occurring through the same time period. One indication is displayed in Figure 2, which traces the relationship between productivity and wages since 1948. As can be clearly seen, the wages of nonsupervisory workers grew in tandem with productivity until the mid-1970s, after which point wages flattened. The result, as economists at the Economic Policy Institute conclude, is “an overall shift in how much of the income in the economy is received by workers in wages and benefits, and how much is received by owners.” Thus, as they further explain, “[R]ising productivity in recent decades provided the potential for a substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority of workers” (Bivens & Mishel, 2015, our emphasis). However, “this potential was squandered,” as nearly all of the added value generated by increased productivity went to corporate owners, rather than workers, fueling the growth of extreme inequality.
Figure 2 makes clear that these two measures tracked closely until the mid 1970s, when wage growth leveled off, creating a growing, long-term divergence. A comprehensive analysis of the factors accounting for this divergence lie beyond the scope of this paper. However, one significant set of such factors responsible for this pattern derives from pressures to reduce labor costs and regulatory oversight, which led to the mass exportation of manufacturing and other jobs from the U.S. and other advanced societies. This practice not only cost millions of jobs, but also created downward wage pressure on domestic workers, and weakened unions. Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, epitomized this logic when he described as a corporate ideal, “...having every plant you own on a barge” (Palley, 2007) that could quickly relocate to wherever a new source of cheap labor might be found—a telling vision of the implications of the logic of capital for anything like a social contract, and of the global “race to the bottom” for workers’ pay.
Figure 2. Productivity Growth and Hourly Compensation Growth, 1948-2018 (Economic Policy Institute)
To put this productivity-wage gap in perspective, it is also instructive to give further consideration to the slice of the economic pie paid to workers. Our analysis (available on request) of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the total economic output for the U.S. in 1970 was just over 2 trillion (in current dollars), with 62% of that (1.28 trillion) paid to workers. By 2018 the output had increased almost 8-fold to 15.68 trillion (in current dollars), with a decrease in labor share to 56%, or 8.86 trillion. Had the share of compensation kept pace with post-WWII level, at 65%, from 1979 to 2018 a total of 18.1 trillion could have gone to members of the workforce—more than double the amount they actually received.
Parallel to this dramatic divergence, or “U-Turn,” in Harrison and Bluestone’s terms, consider trends of income inequality over this same time period. As can be seen in Figure 3, the mid-1970s also mark a turning point in the distribution of national income, with the share of pre-tax national income going to the bottom 50% of the population decreasing dramatically
(from 20% to 12% of the total) while the share of the top 1% increased by roughly the same amount. Thus, these two groups—the bottom 50% and the top 1%— essentially traded places in their share of the income distribution.
These data on productivity, wages and inequality arguably reveal some of the factors involved in the erosion of an economically secure, structurally and publicly supported life-course regime. The expansion of neoliberal policies severely reduced support for the programs that had established the institutionalized life course and has undermined the prospects for a sense of biographical security that the institutionalized life course provided, while contributing to a growing economic precarity faced by large segments of the midlife and older populations, as well as by young people (Standing, 2011). Together they give a sense of the immense wealth lost to workers and their families after 1975 as they tried to plan their lives according to the script provided by the ILC.
Parallel to this dramatic divergence, or “U-Turn,” in Harrison and Bluestone’s terms, consider trends of income inequality over this same time period. As can be seen in Figure 3, the mid-1970s also mark a turning point in the distribution of national income, with the share of pre-tax national income going to the bottom 50% of the population decreasing dramatically
(from 20% to 12% of the total) while the share of the top 1% increased by roughly the same amount. Thus, these two groups—the bottom 50% and the top 1%— essentially traded places in their share of the income distribution.
These data on productivity, wages and inequality arguably reveal some of the factors involved in the erosion of an economically secure, structurally and publicly supported life-course regime. The expansion of neoliberal policies severely reduced support for the programs that had established the institutionalized life course and has undermined the prospects for a sense of biographical security that the institutionalized life course provided, while contributing to a growing economic precarity faced by large segments of the midlife and older populations, as well as by young people (Standing, 2011). Together they give a sense of the immense wealth lost to workers and their families after 1975 as they tried to plan their lives according to the script provided by the ILC.
Figure 3. National Income Share Of Bottom 50% And Top 1%, USA 1962-2014. (Piketty, Saez & Zucman, 2016)
The decline in wages is, of course, not the only form of decline in both private and public resources to individuals and families. Some longstanding corporate pension funds either imploded or scaled back benefits and as noted earlier, employers offering defined pension benefits shifted heavily to defined contributions, limiting the commitment of employing institutions and offloading risk to individuals and families (Ghilarducci, 2008; Morrissey, 2016). These changes happened while, as noted earlier, Social Security’s age of eligibility for full benefits was raised from 65 to 67, and penalties increased for premature withdrawals (see Shuey & O’Rand, 2004; Quadagno, 1996). For the most vulnerable older adults, the persistent attacks on Medicaid have finally led to imposed work requirements for its recipients in some states and in 2020, allowing states to cap federal funding into the program. The same neoliberal assaults were evident at the beginning of the life course, in reductions in support for K-12 public education and higher education. Today, roughly 70% of American students end up taking out loans to go to college. This reduction is arguably a significant contributor to the cost of higher education and to the student debt crisis (Hartlep, Eckrich & Hensley, 2017). The average graduate leaves school with around $30,000 in debt and all told, some 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in student loans—and counting (Fields, 2019).
The broad impact of such changes has not been distributed evenly across different sectors of the population. This is evident in the dramatic rise in precarity—in the rapid increase in individuals having to work multiple jobs, in the continuing growth of trajectories of income inequality in each succeeding cohort (Piketty, Saez & Guzman, 2016; Crystal et al., 2017), and in the reductions in life expectancy for key subgroups, including less-educated white women (Case & Deaton, 2020; Montez & Zajacova, 2014). Across broad sectors of society, we see here an off-loading of risk by corporate and governmental entities, that puts individuals and families on their own in terms of their economic futures and economic security. In the U.S. and elsewhere, intracohort inequality is greatest among older people (Crystal & Waehrer, 1996; Dannefer & Sell, 1988), and is now becoming more pronounced (Crystal et al., 2017).
In this context, it is more than ironic that the offloading of risk from public and corporate entities to individuals and families has sought legitimacy by co-opting some of the elements advanced by the “age-integrated model” for neoliberalism’s own ideological purposes. Those who advocate reducing or eliminating the benefits of the institutionalized life course will understandably utilize any notions of “free agency” to justify the breakdown of its structures and legitimate the growth of midlife precarity. Thus, students and young employees are now regularly informed that the “restrictive” one-career life is over, and that they will have the “opportunity” to develop a “flexible,” “do-it-yourself” career (e.g., Kunda, 1992, p. 122-125). Such impulses have multiple parallels across disparate kinds of work settings, as when truckers are encouraged to become owner-operator truckers, “owning” their truck (mortgaged to a bank of course) and assuming all the risks of its value, insurance, repairs, and upkeep (Black, 2009; Smith, Bensman & Marvy, 2010), or when functions traditionally handled in-house are outsourced to employees misclassified as “independent contractors” who typically work without the integral provision of any pension, healthcare or other such benefits. The spread of contingent labor throughout the economy has increased precarity and undermined the feasibility of life planning at every stage of the life course (Barker & Christensen, 1998; Hatton, 2011; Gonos & Martino, 2011).
Similarly, in the domain of retirement pensions, a dominant narrative claimed that it would be a “good deal” and “great opportunity” to switch from defined benefit to defined contribution retirement plans (e.g., Gustman & Steinmeier, 1999; Kotlikoff, 1996; Russell, 2014). All such efforts represent ideologies to provide legitimation for the growth of midlife precarity.
Such precarity is a far cry from what Riley and others have had in mind with the conception of a flexible, age-integrated life course, which rests on the floor of the social contract and in which flexibility is primarily under the control of the aging person, not the employer who promotes “flexibilization” to put employees on standby (see Phillipson, 2002). Riley envisioned a cultural shift in which the idea for meaningful, lifelong productivity allowed for greater individual control and autonomy. However, such a shift would necessarily presuppose continuity with the social contract of the institutionalized life course, with broad social and institutional support, and strong societal purchase and warrant.
PROTECTING THE EXPERIENCE OF AGING: POLICY DIRECTIONS TO REBUILD THE LIFE COURSE
The growing precarity associated with the decline of a socially supported life course regime clearly has implications for health and quality of life as individuals move through the life course and into old age. It is important to remember that the life course regime was originally organized by social policies, and its decline can be attributed at least partially to policy changes (e.g., reducing support for basic and advanced education; drastic reductions in the tax rate on high income earners from the 1960s to the present; reduced retirement options and benefits). While such policies do not necessarily bear directly on old age, they do have implications for midlife earnings and related benefits—factors which, in turn, predict a great deal about late-life health and quality of life. For gerontologists, to be unconcerned with such issues is to be unconcerned with how equipped coming generations of elders are as they enter later life and old age.
While this is not the place to undertake a comprehensive analysis of potentially relevant policy initiatives, the foregoing analysis makes clear that at least one domain that warrants attention is the domain of earnings, and specifically the need to reestablish the connection between wages and productivity, that obtained prior to the ascent of neoliberal tax and regulatory policies. A wide range of such policy discussions are underway, including a UBI (universal basic income), baby bond proposals, living wage requirements, progressive tax policies, and free college education. As we learn more about the resilience and robustness of the socioeconomic gradient, the implications of such policies for aging and later life can be ignored only at gerontology’s peril.
The analysis of productivity presented earlier also points to a second set of circumstances and issues that are perhaps more closely attuned to the specific vision of Riley’s model of the age-integrated life course. Such issues include the fact that productivity has continued to increase, quite linearly, since WWII. By definition, when productivity grows, the actual value of an hour of work increases. If workers saw the benefit of this increase in their wages, they would be in a position to exercise more control over the biographical contours of their own lives. Similarly, restoring more progressive tax policies in the U.S. could help enable adequate health and education to support an age-integrated life course. Greater earnings, and potentially greater savings, could lay the foundation for addressing the excessive midlife demands chronicled by Riley. Such demands have expanded since she wrote about the increasing number of individuals working two jobs, along with the numbers of midlife and aging adults, especially women, compelled to balance work and caregiving demands, or being unable to afford retirement. Put differently, a potential benefit of a fairer distribution of the benefits of increased productivity is that it could enable midlife earners to a) spend more time with family members and other socially rewarding informal activity, b) plan or obtain training for a different occupation or career; and/or c) pursue enriching avocational goals.
In the U.S., the establishment of the 40-hour work week required decades of labor struggle to overcome the staunch resistance and brutal repression of employers who billed the proposal as unaffordable, unworkable, and “revolutionary” (Roediger & Foner, 1989). It wasn’t until 1938, when legislation mandated “overtime” pay, along with a “minimum” wage, that the standard 40-hour week became public policy. This norm was an integral part of the life course paradigm that drove postwar prosperity. However, much like other chronometrically-based criteria in society (Chudacoff, 1992; Rogoff, 2003), the conception of a 40-hour work week was incidental, certainly not based on anything in human nature or the science of efficiency. Federal policies for overtime pay and a minimum wage led to the effective normalization of the 40-hour work week. Just as that policy innovation was attacked as an economic impossibility, it is now arguably well past time to explore the implementation of both a “living wage” policy (see Marshall, 2019; Luce, 2004) and further reductions in the normative work week, especially in view of the dramatic productivity gains made possible by technology.
Indeed, if we are to represent the interests of individuals approaching old age during an extended historical period of rising labor productivity, should gerontology not be pointing to the need to explore the feasibility and benefits of, say, a 28- or 30- hour week?[i] This would of course not preclude a longer work week for those who receive intrinsic rewards from their work any more than do current work-week expectations, but it would be an integral part of a supportive framework to allow those who would relish more control over the finite number of hours in their fast-fleeting lives. This is certainly applicable for those whose work-life offers little rewards or physical assaults on the body, as noted earlier.
One of the now-well-established principles of positive mental health is the importance of having a sense of control over one’s life (Heckhausen, 1997; Kahana, Kahana & Lee, 2014; Mirowsky & Ross, 2003). As is now well understood, solid mental and physical health in early life, midlife and throughout the life course are of key importance as a foundation for dealing with the challenges of later life. Thus, a concern with supporting the life course and in particular, supporting developments that can enhance the possibilities for a socially supported yet flexible “age-integrated” life course are key elements in a holistic approach to aging and old age.
[i] In recent years, many self-interested employers have reduced the hours given to “full-time” workers to less than 30 per week, as a way of avoiding the mandated costs of “Obamacare” and other labor regulations. Absent a legislated increase in the current “minimum” wage to a genuine “living wage,” however, this has only served to force workers to compensate by taking multiple jobs. On the efficacy of living wage policy in reducing precarity and inequality (see Marshall, 2019; Luce, 2004). The need to transform the current minimum wage policy to a living wage policy is indicated by the fact that the last time the legislated minimum wage could realistically sustain an individual was in the late 1960s (Elwell 2014).
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Kanter, R. M., (1977). Men and women of the corporation. Basic Books.
Katz, S. (2005). Cultural aging. Life Course, Lifestyle and Senior Worlds. University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division
Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was white: An untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century America. WW Norton & Company.
Kelly, G. M. (2000). Employment and concepts of work in the new global economy. International Labour Review, 139(1), 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913x.2000.tb00400.x
Kett, J. (1977). Rites of passage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the present. Basic Books.
Kohli, M. (2007): The institutionalization of the life course: Looking back to look ahead. Research in Human Development, 4(3-4), 253-271.
Kotlikoff, L. J. (1996). Privatizing social security at home and abroad. The American Economic Review, 86(2), 368-372.
Kunda, G. (1992). Engineering culture: control and commitment in a high-tech corporation. Temple University Press.
Leachman, M., Masterson, K., & Figueroa, E. (2017). A punishing decade for school funding. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 29. Retrieved from https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding
Luce, S. 2004. Fighting for a Living Wage. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Marucci-Wellman, H. R., Willetts, J. L., Lin, T. C., Brennan, M. J., & Verma, S. K. (2014). Work in multiple jobs and the risk of injury in the US working population. American Journal of Public Health, 104(1), 134-142.
Marshall, B. L., & Katz, S. (2012). The embodied life course: Post-ageism or the renaturalization of gender?. Societies, 2(4), 222-234
Marshall, S. 2019. Living Wage: Regulatory Solutions to Informal and Precarious Work in Global Supply Chains. Oxford University Press.
Mirowsky, J., & Ross, C. E. (2003). Education, social status, and health. Transaction Publishers.
Morrissey, M. (2016). The state of American retirement: How 401 (k) s have failed most American workers. Economic Policy Institute, 3.
Montez, J. K., & Zajacova, A. (2014). Why is life expectancy declining among low-educated women in the United States?. American Journal of Public Health, 104(10), e5-e7.
Neff, W. (1985). Work and Human Behavior. Routledge.
Neugarten, B. L. (Ed.). (1968). Middle age and aging. University of Chicago Press.
Palley, T. I. (2007). Jack Welch’s barge: the new economics of trade. Retrieved from http://thomaspalley.com/?p=87
Parsons, T. (1972). The System of Modern Societies. Practice-Hall. Inc. Englewood Cliffs.
Peterson, P. (1999). Grey Dawn. Random House.
Phillipson, C. (2002). Transitions from work to retirement: Developing a new social contract. Policy Press.
Phillipson, C., Field, J., Burke, R., & Cooper, C. (2013). Reconstructing work and retirement: labour market trends and policy issues. The Sage Handbook of Ageing, Work and Society, London: Sage, pp. 445-60.
Piketty, T., Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2016). Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States (Working Paper No. 22945; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w22945
Poole, M. (2006). The segregated origins of social security: African Americans and the welfare
state. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Quadagno, J. (1989). Generational equity and the politics of the welfare state. Politics & Society, 17(3), 353-376.
Quadagno, J. (1996). Social security and the myth of the entitlement “Crisis”. The Gerontologist, 36(3), 391-399.
Quadagno, J., & Street, D. (2006). Recent trends in US social welfare policy: minor retrenchment or major transformation?. Research on Aging, 28(3), 303-316.
Riley, M. W., Kahn, R. L., Foner, A., & Mack, K. A. (Eds.). (1994). Age and structural lag: Society's failure to provide meaningful opportunities in work, family, and leisure. John Wiley & Sons.
Riley, M. W., & Riley Jr, J. W. (1994). Age integration and the lives of older people. The Gerontologist, 34(1), 110-115.
Roediger, D. R., & Foner, P. S. (1989). Our own time: A history of American labor and the working day. Verso.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press
Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing.
Russell, J. W. (2014). Social Insecurity: 401 (k) s and the Retirement Crisis. Beacon Press.
Saad Filho, A., & Johnston, D. (2005). Neoliberalism: A critical reader. University of Chicago Press.
Sarason, S. B. (1977). Work, aging, and social change: Professionals and the one life-one career imperative. Free Press.
Shuey, K. M., & O'Rand, A. M. (2004). New risks for workers: Pensions, labor markets, and gender. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 453-477.
Smith, R., Bensman, D., & Marvy, P. A. (2010). The big rig: Poverty, pollution, and the misclassification of truck drivers at America’s ports. National Employment Law Project, The union federation Change to Win, and Rutgers University. Retrieved from https://teamster.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/povertypollutionandmisclassification.pdf
Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic
Standing, G. (2014). A precariat charter: From denizens to citizens. A&C Black.
Stone, K. V. W. (2004). From Widgets to Digits. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511617089
Tanner, M.D. (2001, Feb 5) The African American Stake in Social Security Reform. Cato Institute. Retrieved from https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/african-american-stake-social-security-reform
Uhlenberg, P. (1988). Aging and the societal significance of cohorts. In J. Birren and V. Bengston (Eds.),Emergent theories of aging, pp. 405–425. Springer.
Uhlenberg, P. (1992). Population Aging and Social Policy. Annual Review of Sociology, 18(1), 449–474. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.002313
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The broad impact of such changes has not been distributed evenly across different sectors of the population. This is evident in the dramatic rise in precarity—in the rapid increase in individuals having to work multiple jobs, in the continuing growth of trajectories of income inequality in each succeeding cohort (Piketty, Saez & Guzman, 2016; Crystal et al., 2017), and in the reductions in life expectancy for key subgroups, including less-educated white women (Case & Deaton, 2020; Montez & Zajacova, 2014). Across broad sectors of society, we see here an off-loading of risk by corporate and governmental entities, that puts individuals and families on their own in terms of their economic futures and economic security. In the U.S. and elsewhere, intracohort inequality is greatest among older people (Crystal & Waehrer, 1996; Dannefer & Sell, 1988), and is now becoming more pronounced (Crystal et al., 2017).
In this context, it is more than ironic that the offloading of risk from public and corporate entities to individuals and families has sought legitimacy by co-opting some of the elements advanced by the “age-integrated model” for neoliberalism’s own ideological purposes. Those who advocate reducing or eliminating the benefits of the institutionalized life course will understandably utilize any notions of “free agency” to justify the breakdown of its structures and legitimate the growth of midlife precarity. Thus, students and young employees are now regularly informed that the “restrictive” one-career life is over, and that they will have the “opportunity” to develop a “flexible,” “do-it-yourself” career (e.g., Kunda, 1992, p. 122-125). Such impulses have multiple parallels across disparate kinds of work settings, as when truckers are encouraged to become owner-operator truckers, “owning” their truck (mortgaged to a bank of course) and assuming all the risks of its value, insurance, repairs, and upkeep (Black, 2009; Smith, Bensman & Marvy, 2010), or when functions traditionally handled in-house are outsourced to employees misclassified as “independent contractors” who typically work without the integral provision of any pension, healthcare or other such benefits. The spread of contingent labor throughout the economy has increased precarity and undermined the feasibility of life planning at every stage of the life course (Barker & Christensen, 1998; Hatton, 2011; Gonos & Martino, 2011).
Similarly, in the domain of retirement pensions, a dominant narrative claimed that it would be a “good deal” and “great opportunity” to switch from defined benefit to defined contribution retirement plans (e.g., Gustman & Steinmeier, 1999; Kotlikoff, 1996; Russell, 2014). All such efforts represent ideologies to provide legitimation for the growth of midlife precarity.
Such precarity is a far cry from what Riley and others have had in mind with the conception of a flexible, age-integrated life course, which rests on the floor of the social contract and in which flexibility is primarily under the control of the aging person, not the employer who promotes “flexibilization” to put employees on standby (see Phillipson, 2002). Riley envisioned a cultural shift in which the idea for meaningful, lifelong productivity allowed for greater individual control and autonomy. However, such a shift would necessarily presuppose continuity with the social contract of the institutionalized life course, with broad social and institutional support, and strong societal purchase and warrant.
PROTECTING THE EXPERIENCE OF AGING: POLICY DIRECTIONS TO REBUILD THE LIFE COURSE
The growing precarity associated with the decline of a socially supported life course regime clearly has implications for health and quality of life as individuals move through the life course and into old age. It is important to remember that the life course regime was originally organized by social policies, and its decline can be attributed at least partially to policy changes (e.g., reducing support for basic and advanced education; drastic reductions in the tax rate on high income earners from the 1960s to the present; reduced retirement options and benefits). While such policies do not necessarily bear directly on old age, they do have implications for midlife earnings and related benefits—factors which, in turn, predict a great deal about late-life health and quality of life. For gerontologists, to be unconcerned with such issues is to be unconcerned with how equipped coming generations of elders are as they enter later life and old age.
While this is not the place to undertake a comprehensive analysis of potentially relevant policy initiatives, the foregoing analysis makes clear that at least one domain that warrants attention is the domain of earnings, and specifically the need to reestablish the connection between wages and productivity, that obtained prior to the ascent of neoliberal tax and regulatory policies. A wide range of such policy discussions are underway, including a UBI (universal basic income), baby bond proposals, living wage requirements, progressive tax policies, and free college education. As we learn more about the resilience and robustness of the socioeconomic gradient, the implications of such policies for aging and later life can be ignored only at gerontology’s peril.
The analysis of productivity presented earlier also points to a second set of circumstances and issues that are perhaps more closely attuned to the specific vision of Riley’s model of the age-integrated life course. Such issues include the fact that productivity has continued to increase, quite linearly, since WWII. By definition, when productivity grows, the actual value of an hour of work increases. If workers saw the benefit of this increase in their wages, they would be in a position to exercise more control over the biographical contours of their own lives. Similarly, restoring more progressive tax policies in the U.S. could help enable adequate health and education to support an age-integrated life course. Greater earnings, and potentially greater savings, could lay the foundation for addressing the excessive midlife demands chronicled by Riley. Such demands have expanded since she wrote about the increasing number of individuals working two jobs, along with the numbers of midlife and aging adults, especially women, compelled to balance work and caregiving demands, or being unable to afford retirement. Put differently, a potential benefit of a fairer distribution of the benefits of increased productivity is that it could enable midlife earners to a) spend more time with family members and other socially rewarding informal activity, b) plan or obtain training for a different occupation or career; and/or c) pursue enriching avocational goals.
In the U.S., the establishment of the 40-hour work week required decades of labor struggle to overcome the staunch resistance and brutal repression of employers who billed the proposal as unaffordable, unworkable, and “revolutionary” (Roediger & Foner, 1989). It wasn’t until 1938, when legislation mandated “overtime” pay, along with a “minimum” wage, that the standard 40-hour week became public policy. This norm was an integral part of the life course paradigm that drove postwar prosperity. However, much like other chronometrically-based criteria in society (Chudacoff, 1992; Rogoff, 2003), the conception of a 40-hour work week was incidental, certainly not based on anything in human nature or the science of efficiency. Federal policies for overtime pay and a minimum wage led to the effective normalization of the 40-hour work week. Just as that policy innovation was attacked as an economic impossibility, it is now arguably well past time to explore the implementation of both a “living wage” policy (see Marshall, 2019; Luce, 2004) and further reductions in the normative work week, especially in view of the dramatic productivity gains made possible by technology.
Indeed, if we are to represent the interests of individuals approaching old age during an extended historical period of rising labor productivity, should gerontology not be pointing to the need to explore the feasibility and benefits of, say, a 28- or 30- hour week?[i] This would of course not preclude a longer work week for those who receive intrinsic rewards from their work any more than do current work-week expectations, but it would be an integral part of a supportive framework to allow those who would relish more control over the finite number of hours in their fast-fleeting lives. This is certainly applicable for those whose work-life offers little rewards or physical assaults on the body, as noted earlier.
One of the now-well-established principles of positive mental health is the importance of having a sense of control over one’s life (Heckhausen, 1997; Kahana, Kahana & Lee, 2014; Mirowsky & Ross, 2003). As is now well understood, solid mental and physical health in early life, midlife and throughout the life course are of key importance as a foundation for dealing with the challenges of later life. Thus, a concern with supporting the life course and in particular, supporting developments that can enhance the possibilities for a socially supported yet flexible “age-integrated” life course are key elements in a holistic approach to aging and old age.
[i] In recent years, many self-interested employers have reduced the hours given to “full-time” workers to less than 30 per week, as a way of avoiding the mandated costs of “Obamacare” and other labor regulations. Absent a legislated increase in the current “minimum” wage to a genuine “living wage,” however, this has only served to force workers to compensate by taking multiple jobs. On the efficacy of living wage policy in reducing precarity and inequality (see Marshall, 2019; Luce, 2004). The need to transform the current minimum wage policy to a living wage policy is indicated by the fact that the last time the legislated minimum wage could realistically sustain an individual was in the late 1960s (Elwell 2014).
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