Angelo Lorenti

Objectives: We examined how gender and education shape the distribution of life years spent in full-year or mid-to-low intensity employment, unemployment-inactivity, disability pension, and retirement in two countries with distinct welfare regimes, labor markets, and pension structures. Methods: Using Finnish population registers and the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data linked to administrative records for Italy, we followed individuals from 2005 to 2018 and applied discrete-time incidence-based multistate models. Through the estimated transition probabilities, we derived life expectancy at age 30 and years spent in different labor market states. Results: Time spent in full-year employment in general was similar across both countries, but with larger differences by education in Finland and a larger gender gap in Italy. Italy experiences a prolonged time in unemployment or inactivity, particularly among women. Italy also has longer disability pension durations, while Finland has more years in retirement, but with substantial gender and educational differences. Discussion: We advance existing knowledge by providing more granularity on years spent in employment and retirement and using multistate models on large-scale data. We revealed important gender and socioeconomic inequalities in labor market participation and retirement experiences. We also showed important cross-country differences, likely shaped by welfare regimes and labor market structures. These findings highlight the need for targeted policies addressing structural barriers: in Italy, to reduce gender gaps and fragmented careers, also limiting pension adequacy; in Finland, to address persistent educational inequalities in employment and retirement.

Objectives: Older adults are at high risk of the negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness. One of those possible negative health impacts is Alzheimer’s disease, a leading cause of death for adults in the United States and many high-income countries. Taking a life course perspective, we explore whether there is a direct causal effect of social isolation on later-life trajectories of cognitive function, the extent to which any effect of social isolation on cognitive impairment operates indirectly through loneliness, who may be most vulnerable, and the potential efficacy of a statistical intervention for those living alone. Methods: We use a counterfactual approach, the g-formula, with the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, analyzing data from 30,421 individuals with 137,653 observations across 2004–2018. Results: We find a consistent pattern of social isolation having a detrimental direct causal effect on cognitive function, with only 6% of this effect operating through loneliness. Reducing social isolation has a protective effect on cognitive function for all subpopulations regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, and educational level, with only minor differences among social categories. Our statistical intervention shows that targeting social isolation in those living alone may be one viable public health strategy for protecting against cognitive decline. Discussion: Our results suggest that addressing social isolation—and, by extension, its effects on health—requires both a broad understanding of its heterogeneous impacts on the general population and a nuanced approach to targeting public health interventions where they can be most effective.

As societies globally cope with the challenges of an aging population, pension systems face increasing strain. Italy, one of Europe’s largest economies and oldest populations, provides a compelling case for examining the complex interplay between gender and regional disparities in the context of extended working lives. The study of Working Life Expectancy across Italian regions from 2000 to 2016 reveals a generally upward trend and shows the complex dynamics of the aging workforce. While the overall trend in working life expectancy is positive, gender differences persist. Despite women experienced a substantial increase in employment, gender gaps remain large, particularly in the southern regions. Further examination of retirement trends underscores the complex relationship between gender, region, and the duration of retirement. The study concludes that policy efforts aimed at guaranteeing the financial viability of the pension system should focus not only on increasing the retirement age but also investing in employment opportunities, particularly for women and individuals living in the southern regions. Considering the diverse employment trajectories of individuals, especially in relation to gender and regional differences, is essential for ensuring the effectiveness and fairness of initiatives addressing population aging. Investing in women’s employment would help promote gender equality and reduce the underutilization of human capital.

Future fertility is a key input when charting the sustainability of social security systems, and declining fertility is often expected to put pressure on economic indicators, such as pension burden. Such expectations are based on a narrow view of the impact of fertility on the economy, focusing on age structure. Dynamic impacts—for instance, the potential for increased human capital for smaller cohorts—are mostly ignored. We use a dynamic longitudinal microsimulation model to explore the extent to which investments in human capital could offset the adverse economic impact of low fertility. Our research context is Finland, the fastest aging European country and the site of dramatic fertility declines and stagnant educational levels in the 2020s. We find that an ambitious but simple human capital investment strategy that keeps the total investment constant despite declining cohort size, thereby increasing per capita investment, can offset the negative impact of a smaller labor force on the pension burden. Human capital investment not only reduces pension burden but also increases working years, pension income, retirement years, and longevity. Policies focusing on human capital investment are likely a viable strategy to maintain economic sustainability.

Italy has witnessed increases in life expectancy and population ageing, raising concerns about their impact on population health. Disability status greatly affects the participation of mid-to-older-aged adults in various aspects of life. We examine the long-term trend in disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) in Italy, over three different periods between 2004 and 2019, and explore disability dynamics (onset and recovery) and changes in disability-specific mortality. We use IT-SILC longitudinal data to estimate transition probabilities and DFLE between ages 50 and 79 and decompose DFLE changes in terms of these transitions. Overall, DFLE has improved over recent decades but not always as favourably as life expectancy. The trends indicate compression of disability between ages 50 and 79 in the most recent years. Changes in disability transitions have had the greatest influence, whereas disability-specific mortality has had much less impact on DFLE changes. The greatest contributions have come from increases in the probability of recovery from disability.

Women’s labor force participation has increased in Western countries, but gender gaps remain, especially among parents. Using a novel comparative perspective, we assess women’s and men’s employment trajectories from midlife onward by parity and education. We provide insights into the gendered parenthood-employment gaps examining the long-term implications of parenthood beyond the core childbearing ages by decomposing years lived between ages 40–74, in years of employment, joblessness, and retirement. Using multistate incidence-based life tables, we compare different cultural and institutional contexts: Finland, Italy, and the USA. Our results document large cross-national variation, with education playing a key role. In Finland, the number of years of employment increases with parity for women and men, and the gender gap is small; in the USA, the relationship between parity and years of employment is relatively flat, although a gender gap emerges among those with two or more children; in Italy, the number of years of employment decreases sharply for women as parity increases, while it increases for men. Notably, education has a similar positive impact on years of employment across all groups in Finland. In contrast, in the USA and Italy, the gender gap is only half as large among highly educated mothers as it is among low educated mothers. The employment trajectories of childless women and men differ greatly across countries.

The disappearance of the social gradient in fertility represents a paradigm shift that has called into question the validity of theories that predicted a decline in fertility with increased access to education and resources. Emerging theories have tried to explain this trend by highlighting a potential change in the fertility preferences of more educated couples. In this paper we add additional elements to this explanation. Using a computational modelling approach, we show that it is still possible to simulate the weakening social gradient in fertility, in the context of steady declines in family size preferences. Our results show that one of the key drivers of the change in the education-fertility relationship can be found in the transition to an increasingly regulated fertility regime. As the share of unplanned births decreases over time, the negative association between education and fertility weakens and the mechanisms that positively connect educational attainment with desired fertility become dominant.

Future fertility is a key input when charting the sustainability of social security systems, and declining fertility is often expected to put pressure on economic indicators such as pension burden. Such expectations are based on a narrow view of the impact of fertility on the economy, focusing on age structure. Dynamic impacts – for instance, the potential for increased human capital of smaller cohorts – are mostly ignored. We use a dynamic longitudinal microsimulation model to explore to what extent investments in human capital could offset the adverse economic impact of low fertility. We implement our model in the Finnish context, which is a particularly interesting case as Finland is the fastest-ageing European country and experienced dramatic fertility declines and stagnant education levels in the 2020s. We find that an ambitious but simple human capital investment strategy that keeps the total investment constant despite declining cohort size, thereby increasing per-capita investment, can offset the negative impact of a smaller labor force on pension burden. Human capital investment not only reduces pension burden, but also increases working years, pension income, retirement years, and longevity. Policies focusing on human capital investment are likely to be a viable strategy to maintain economic sustainability.