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Do public pensions matter for health and wellbeing among retired persons? Basic and income security pensions across 13 Western European countries
- Authors:
- ESSER Ingrid, PALME Joakim
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Social Welfare, 19(Supplement 1), July 2010, pp.s103-s120.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Coinciding with economic development and the expansion of public social security, mortality rates suggest that elderly people in the advanced welfare democracies have experienced dramatically improved health over the past decades. This study investigated the importance of public pensions for self-reported health and wellbeing among retired people in 13 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 2002 and 2005. Public pension data make it possible to differentiate between two basic qualities of pension systems: 'basic security' for those who have no or a short work history; and 'income security' for those with a more extensive contribution record. For enhanced cross-national comparison, relative measures of ill-health and wellbeing were used to account for cultural bias in responses to survey questions and heterogeneity among countries in the general level of population health. Results, overall, indicate that better health was found in countries with more generous public pensions, although the results were gendered – for women's health, high basic security of the pension system appears to be particularly important. Women's wellbeing also tends to be more dependent on the quality of basic security.
Welfare trends in Sweden
- Authors:
- PALME Joakim, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of European Social Policy, 12(4), November 2002, pp.329-346.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article looks at the development of welfare in the 1990s in Sweden. The article investigates the effects for the welfare of individual members of society and asks what happened to the welfare state model. Figures on individual living conditions are taken from primary analyses of Statistics Sweden's Surveys of living conditions. The article also discusses differences between gender, age groups and the situation of disadvantaged groups. The analysis focuses on work, economic circumstances and health, though in the discussion of disadvantaged groups additional data on more dimensions of welfare is included.