By John Myles,
Almost two decades ago, political scientist Hugh Heclo (1988) pointed out that the great debate over intergenerational “class war” and equity in the U.S. had largely passed Europe by. The difference, he speculated, has to do with Europeans’ greater inclination towards “life course” thinking when tackling issues about inequality: childhood and old age are simply different moments in the lives of the same people.
Americans, he argued, are more inclined to consider the elderly and children as more or less static, distinct social groups that, in turn, divide into yet other groups based on race, disability status, and so forth. For Americans, thinking about childhood and old age as raising a distributional problem over a single life course seems distinctly foreign.
Whether Heclo captured the true mindset of Americans and Europeans correctly is not important. What matters is the way we approach the issue of redesigning Canada’s social architecture – that is, from a life course perspective. But what exactly does that mean? To illustrate, consider an example well-known to all of us.
Looking back to the 1950s and 1960s, most old people in most industrial democracies were poor. Moving ahead to the present day, comparatively few old people are poor. Why is that? Back then of course, people didn’t have the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), the Guaranteed IncomeSupplement (GIS), occupational pensions, or all the other good stuff we have today. But that’sonly part of the answer.
The elderly cohorts of the 1950s were poor because they had poor lives. Born at the close of the 19th Century, their youth was marred by World War I and their working years straddled the Great Depression and World War II. They were poor not only because public retirement plans were ungenerous, and private plans underdeveloped, but also because they were “unlucky” generations.
By comparison, today’s retirees are relatively affluent mainly because they had good lives. They are the children of high industrialism. Their early careers straddled the booming post-war decades. They generally enjoyed job security and rising real wages over most of their lives, and as a result, accumulated substantial savings and resources, not just CPP benefits. Compared to their parents, today’s retirees, the se children of high industrialism, had “good lives.”
The objective of redesigning our social architecture is to ensure that today’s children and theyoung adults now entering the labour market also have good lives – as children, as young adults, during middle age, and in their retirement years.
So let’s think about the potential life courses of today’s post-industrial cohorts and their children. That’s not so hard. The cohorts who will reach age 65 in the year 2040 are already with us. In fact, they will turn 30 in 2005. How will their Postponed Adulthood: Dealing with the New Economic Inequality lives differ from those of their industrial-age predecessors, today’s retirees who entered the booming labour markets of the 50s and 60s when the foundations of the contemporary welfare state were put in place? What new risks do they face?
This paper is part of the Canadian Council on Social Development’s New Social Architectureseries. The project is designed to highlight and examine key social challenges facing Canadatoday and set out a number of strategic options for change.
Το πλήρες κείμενο μπορείτε να το διαβάσετε πατώντας εδώ. Ο John Myles είναι καθηγητής στο πανεπιστήμιο του Τορόντο στο Καναδά.