433 34. Microfinance, cooperatives and time banks: community-provided welfare Ed Collom 1. INTRODUCTION Grassroots activists have become increasingly creative in building solutions to contem- porary social problems. Many of these issues stem from the shortcomings of two domi- nant social institutions – the state and the economy. Citizens in post-industrial societies have struggled to maintain an adequate standard of living as poverty, unemployment and underemployment are persistent and growing problems under global capitalism. Demographic changes and the resulting aging of our societies add further challenges to economic well-being. In this chapter, three examples of community-provided welfare are explored and assessed in relation to aging and demographic changes. As Zack de la Rocha (1999) rapped in a Rage Against the Machine song at the eve of the new millennium, ‘Hungry people don’t stay hungry for long.’ People have become less reliant upon mainstream social institutions and are creating local alternatives to complement or counter the capi- talist economy and state. Microfinance, cooperatives and time banks are all examples of communities engaging in do-it-yourself (DIY) efforts to increase access to resources. In addition to the objectives of economic empowerment, such localism usually aims to build social capital. A number of interesting and important public policy issues emerge from localist, DIY efforts. How can local, state and federal officials play a role in and support these movements? Should scarce governmental resources be channeled toward them? Might these movements ultimately be counter-productive, absolving authorities of traditional responsibilities? These policy issues will be discussed below briefly, in the Conclusion. In the next three sections, microfinance, cooperatives and time banks are described and then assessed in relation to aging. 2. MICROFINANCE Microfinance is an umbrella term referring to the provision of financial services to low- income entrepreneurs who generally lack access to banks and are deemed ‘high-risk’ clients. While microfinance is found primarily in developing countries, immigration and poverty have spurred its growth in post-industrial settings as well. The concept has gained rather broad political support from both conservatives and liberals. Microcredit borrow- ing groups are the predominant form of microfinance. In the 1970s, nonprofit organizations in Latin America (Accion; see http://www.accion. org/) and Bangladesh (Grameen; see http://www.grameenfoundation.org/) launched the HARPER 97808567933904 PRINT (M3469) (G).indd 433 11/06/2014 15:35
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433
34. Microfinance, cooperatives and time banks: community- provided welfareEd Collom
1. INTRODUCTION
Grassroots activists have become increasingly creative in building solutions to contem-
porary social problems. Many of these issues stem from the shortcomings of two domi-
nant social institutions – the state and the economy. Citizens in post- industrial societies
have struggled to maintain an adequate standard of living as poverty, unemployment
and underemployment are persistent and growing problems under global capitalism.
Demographic changes and the resulting aging of our societies add further challenges to
economic well- being.
In this chapter, three examples of community- provided welfare are explored and
assessed in relation to aging and demographic changes. As Zack de la Rocha (1999)
rapped in a Rage Against the Machine song at the eve of the new millennium, ‘Hungry
people don’t stay hungry for long.’ People have become less reliant upon mainstream
social institutions and are creating local alternatives to complement or counter the capi-
talist economy and state. Microfinance, cooperatives and time banks are all examples of
communities engaging in do- it- yourself (DIY) efforts to increase access to resources. In
addition to the objectives of economic empowerment, such localism usually aims to build
social capital.
A number of interesting and important public policy issues emerge from localist,
DIY efforts. How can local, state and federal officials play a role in and support these
movements? Should scarce governmental resources be channeled toward them? Might
these movements ultimately be counter- productive, absolving authorities of traditional
responsibilities? These policy issues will be discussed below briefly, in the Conclusion. In
the next three sections, microfinance, cooperatives and time banks are described and then
assessed in relation to aging.
2. MICROFINANCE
Microfinance is an umbrella term referring to the provision of financial services to low-
income entrepreneurs who generally lack access to banks and are deemed ‘high- risk’
clients. While microfinance is found primarily in developing countries, immigration and
poverty have spurred its growth in post- industrial settings as well. The concept has gained
rather broad political support from both conservatives and liberals. Microcredit borrow-
ing groups are the predominant form of microfinance.
In the 1970s, nonprofit organizations in Latin America (Accion; see http://www.accion.
org/) and Bangladesh (Grameen; see http://www.grameenfoundation.org/) launched the
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cooperatives’, Social Science Quarterly, 60 (4): 551–69.Greenberg, E.S. (1986), Workplace Democracy: The Political Effects of Participation, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.Gunn, C.E. (1984), Workers’ Self- management in the United States, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Harvey, D. (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, New York: Oxford University Press.Hatch, J. (2011), ‘When clients grow old: the importance of age in addressing client needs’, paper presented at
the 2011 Global Microcredit Summit, Valladolid, Spain.Hess, D.J. (2009), Localist Movements in a Global Economy: Sustainability, Justice, and Urban Development in
the United States, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Hodson, R. (2001), Dignity at Work, New York: Cambridge University Press.International Co- operative Alliance (2014), ‘Co- operative identity, values & principles’, available online at
http://ica.coop/en/whats- co- op/co- operative- identity- values- principles.Johnson, S. (1998), ‘Microfinance North and South: contrasting current debates’, Journal of International
Development, 10: 799–809.Lindenfeld, F. (1996), ‘The cooperative commonwealth: an alternative to corporate capitalism and state
socialism’, Humanity & Society, 21 (1): 3–16.Majee, W. and A. Hoyt (2011), ‘Cooperatives and community development: a perspective on the use of coop-
eratives in development’, Journal of Community Practice, 19: 48–61.Meeker- Lowry, S. (1996), ‘Community money: the potential of local currency’. In J. Mander and E. Goldsmith
(eds), The Case Against the Global Economy, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, pp. 446–59.Miller, G.R. (2012), ‘“Gender trouble”: investigating gender and economic democracy in worker cooperatives
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Jelena Atanackovic is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests lie in the area of immigration and integration as well as health policy and healthcare delivery. During her graduate career, Jelena has been involved in many research projects focusing mainly on internation-ally educated healthcare professionals in Canada. Her dissertation research focuses on experiences of foreign live- in caregivers in Ontario. She is currently working on a project that aims to identify and change systemic barriers preventing access to quality language education for internationally educated nurses in the bridging program at York University.
David E. Bloom is Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at Harvard University, and faculty director of Harvard University’s Program on the Global Demography of Aging. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bloom received a BS in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University in 1976, an MA in econom-ics from Princeton University in 1978, and a PhD in economics and demography from Princeton University in 1981.
Ingo Bode holds a chair in Social Policy, Organization and Society at the Department of Social Work and Social Services in the Faculty of Human Sciences of the University of Kassel, Germany. He filled academic positions in Canada, the UK and France before coming to Kassel. His areas of work embrace studies in comparative social policy and organizations in the social and healthcare sector. Currently, he is a grant holder of the Germany Research Council (DFG) and member of the management committee of the European COST action ‘SO.S Cohesion. Social services, welfare state and places’. His latest publications include: ‘Processing institutional change in public service provision. The case of the German hospital sector’, Public Organization Review, 13 (3), 323–39, 2013; ‘In futile search of excellence. The “muddling through agenda” of service- providing “social enterprises” in contemporary Europe’, in Simon Denny and Fred Seddon (eds), Social Enterprise: Accountability and Evaluation around the World (London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 196–212; (with B. Champetier) ‘À la croisée des chemins? Analyser l’évolution des systèmes de care aux aînés par une méthode ouverte de comparaison’, Sociologie, 3 (3), 2012, 283–98.
Axel Börsch- Supan, PhD, studied Economics and Mathematics in Munich and Bonn. He holds a PhD degree from MIT (advisor: Daniel McFadden) and was Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. After two years as Professor of Economics at Dortmund University he became Professor of Macroeconomics and Economic Policy at the University of Mannheim in 1989. Since 2001 he has been the founding and executive director of the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA). In January 2011, Börsch- Supan joined the Max Planck Society. Since July 2011, he has been the director of the Max Planck Institute, which is dedicated to Social Law and Social Policy. He is also the director of
the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA), dedicated to the field of social policy.
Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, PhD, is a professor in the Institute of Population Health at the University of Ottawa and holds the Canadian Institute of Health Research Chair in Health Human Resource Policy, jointly funded by Health Canada. She is also the scien-tific director of the pan- Ontario Population Health Improvement Research Network, the Ontario Health Human Resource Research Network and the pan- Canadian Health Human Resources Network. She has garnered an international reputation for her research on health professions, health policy and women’s health.
Roy Canning is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, University of Stirling, UK. His research interests are primarily in vocational education in the upper secondary school and international comparative studies in vocational education and training. This covers both work- related learning and work- based learning, particularly in the areas of older workers, apprenticeships and college- based learning. Current research projects include a European comparative study for Cedefop on initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Europe and a preliminary study of the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) of European teachers of vocational education.
Bruce A. Carnes is a professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and an adjunct professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma. His research has focused on the biodemography of aging, identifying quan-titative characteristics of mortality, developing a methodology for comparing mortality schedules between species and estimating probabilistic limits (warranty periods) for the duration of life of individuals and the life expectancy of populations.
Lori Carter- Edwards is deputy director for Research and Operations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an active member of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) Community Engagement Key Function Committee and a contributor to the evaluation component of the National Health Disparities Plan. Her primary research interest is in social epidemiology and community interventions addressing health disparities, with a specific emphasis on indi-vidual, social and environmental correlates of obesity in black communities, including faith- based populations.
Taichang Chen (MPhil (Oxon); DPhil (Oxon)) is Assistant Professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China, Beijing. Taichang origi-nally trained as an economist and his early research focused on labour market segmenta-tion and the social implications of rural to urban migration in China. Later, he trained as a sociologist and his current research concerns the socioeconomic aspects of population ageing in China. In particular he considers the impact at societal and individual level of the age- structural shift from predominantly young to predominantly older societies, on the well- being of older people in China.
Ed Collom (PhD, University of California, Riverside, 2001) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern Maine. His research surrounds the study of alternative social forms: local currency, home schooling and workplace democracy. He is lead author of Equal Time, Equal Value (Ashgate, 2012), an investigation of time banking in the USA.
xii International handbook on ageing and public policy
Other publications appear in Work and Occupations, Sociological Forum, Journal of Aging
& Social Policy, and elsewhere. He is considered a leading expert in local currencies and has been widely interviewed and quoted in popular media such as NBC Nightly News,
Time Magazine, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and National Public Radio.
Richard Edlin is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, having previously held posts at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield (UK). A health economist, much of his research involves cost- effectiveness analyses; these aim to inform decision makers by identifying which healthcare interventions are likely to improve population health once their effects on the funding of other treatments are assessed. Richard’s prior research includes an assessment for the UK Department of Health as to whether cost- effectiveness analysis is implicitly ageist in nature.
Arianne Elissen is a research fellow at the CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Since 2007, she has participated in several (inter)national research projects on the design, implementation and evaluation of innova-tive care models for patients with chronic conditions. Arianne has (co- )authored papers in journals including the American Journal of Managed Care, Health Services Research and Health Economics, Policy and Law. She holds a MSc in Health Policy, Economics and Management and a PhD in Health Services Research, both from Maastricht University.
Parfait M. Eloundou- Enyegue is currently a faculty member of the Department of Development Sociology (Cornell University) and a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University. His current research focuses on global inequality, demographic dividends, and schooling in sub- Saharan Africa. In addition to his teaching program in the USA, Asia and Africa, he is involved in a large program of outreach about demographic dividends in francophone Africa.
Marcel Erlinghagen is a professor of sociology at the University of Duisburg- Essen, Germany. He also is a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin. His research focuses on the sociology of labour markets and on volunteer-ing. His research was published in Ageing & Society, the European Sociological Review, and the Journal of Social Policy, among others.
John Field is a professor in the School of Education, University of Stirling, UK. He has written a number of books and papers on social, economic and historical aspects of lifelong learning in the UK and Ireland. He has also written on social capital. His most recent book is Working Men’s Bodies: Work camps in Britain, 1880–1939 (Manchester University Press, 2013). He has been involved in policy advice in Britain and Europe, most recently as part of the UK Government Office for Science’s Foresight project on mental capital and well- being.
Vincenzo Galasso is Professor of Economics at Università della Svizzera Italiana and Director of the Center for Economic and Political Research on Aging (CEPRA), Lugano, Switzerland; Research Fellow at IGIER, Bocconi University, Milan; Research Fellow at CEPR, London, and at CESIfo, Munich. His research deals with political economics, aging, social security and the welfare state. He has widely published in top academic journals in economics and political science. In 2006, he published The Political
Future of Social Security in Aging Societies (The MIT Press, 2006). He received a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Robin Gauld is Professor of Health Policy and Director of the Centre for Health Systems in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is a senior fellow at the Boston University Health Policy Institute, and was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in 2008–09, working with colleagues from Boston University and Harvard University. Current research interests include comparative health policy, health system and quality improvement, care coordination, clinical governance, primary care, population- based health funding formulas, and health information technology. He has authored over 80 peer- reviewed journal articles and several books, including The New Health Policy (Open University Press, 2009), which was awarded First Prize in the Health and Social Care category at the 2010 British Medical Association Medical Book Awards. Other recent books include The Age of Supported
Independence, co- authored with Beatrice Hale and Patrick Barrett (Springer, 2010), Health Care Systems in Asia and Europe, co- edited with Christian Aspalter and Uchida Yasuo (Routledge, 2011) and the forthcoming Democratic Governance in Health, co- authored with Miriam Laugesen (Otago University Press, 2012).
Karsten Hank is a professor of sociology at the University of Cologne, Germany. He also is a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, and member of the working group on ‘Social Networks’ for the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). His research focuses on active and healthy ageing as well as on intergenerational relations in cross- nationally comparative perspec-tive. His research has been published in the European Sociological Review, the Journal
of Gerontology: Social Sciences and the Journal of Marriage and Family, among others.
Jaco Hoffman joined the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing (OIPA), University of Oxford in October 2006 and is currently a senior research fellow, developing the Institute’s focus on ageing in Africa through the conduct of research and the coordination of the African Research on Ageing Network (AFRAN). AFRAN is a United Nations endorsed programme at the OIPA. This collaborative network brings together African and inter-national institutions and individuals from academia, policy and practice to develop and expand African research and training capacity on ageing. Jaco’s research interests revolve around intergenerational issues in Africa in general and in particular the configuration and reconfiguration of these relationships in the context of poverty and HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, he is Senior Researcher at the Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research, North- West University, South Africa and a fellow of the Institute on Ageing in Africa, University of Cape Town, South Africa. As past president of the South African Gerontological Association, he continues to be involved in various developmental pro-grammes and initiatives in the field of ageing in South Africa.
Robert Holzmann is Professor of Economics, now holding the chair of Old Age Financial Protection at the University of Malaya, and is Research Fellow of IZA and CESifo. He was Sector Director of the Social Protection & Labor Department, leading, inter alia, the strategic and conceptual work on pensions and labor at the World Bank. Previously he was Professor of Economics at the University of Saarland (Germany), University of Vienna (Austria), and Senior Economist at IMF and OECD. His research and
xiv International handbook on ageing and public policy
operational involvement extends to all regions of the world, and he has published 32 books and over 150 articles on social, fiscal and financial policy issues.
Kenneth Howse is a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. He has a background in philosophy and worked for several years as a bioethicist with the Institute of Medical Ethics. He first became interested in population ageing in the 1990s when he joined the Centre for Policy on Ageing, a London- based think- tank, as a policy researcher. At CPA he undertook research on religion and ageing, and also on older pris-oners. In 2003 he moved to the Oxford Institute of Ageing, and now has a broad interest in the policy implications of demographic ageing in both the developing and the devel-oped world. Since joining the Institute he has worked on problems of intergenerational fairness and the ethical issues surrounding ageing, the determinants – and implications – of mortality decline, and the health policy challenges of population ageing.
James H. Johnson, Jr is the William Rand Kenan, Jr Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy in the Kenan- Flagler Business School and Director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center in the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His primary research interest lies in the area of post- 1990 demographic changes in the USA, with particular emphasis on the societal implications and impacts of population aging.
Matthew Kaplan, PhD, is Professor of Intergenerational Programs and Aging in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at the Pennsylvania State University. In this position, he conducts research, develops curricular resources, and provides statewide leadership in the development and evaluation of intergenera-tional programs. Dr Kaplan’s work focuses on intergenerational programs and practices from an interdisciplinary and cross- cultural perspective. He has published several books, including two that explore the international dimension of intergenerational work and one on intergenerational strategies for promoting community participation. He has a PhD in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Mikko Kautto works as Head of Research Department at the Centre for Pensions in Finland. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the University of Helsinki. His focus of research is careers and retirement, the sustainability of pension financing and the adequacy of pension provision. He is the editor of Nordic Social Policy (Routledge, 1991) and Nordic Welfare States in the European Context (Routledge, 2001). He has done research in the areas of comparative welfare research, social policy and welfare reform, and also published research on (economic) welfare.
Harold G. Koenig studied at Stanford University; the medical school at the University of California, San Francisco; and followed courses in geriatric medicine, psychiatry and biostatistics training at Duke University. He is on the Duke faculty as Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Professor of Medicine, and on King Abdulaziz University faculty (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) as Distinguished Adjunct Professor. Harold directs the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University. He has nearly 400 sci-entific peer- reviewed articles and book chapters and 40 books in print or preparation. He has given invited testimony to both the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, and in 2012 received the Oskar Pfister Award from the American Psychiatric Association.
David Lain is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Brighton Business School, UK. His current research explores changes to work and retirement in the USA and the UK. He has published on the employment of people aged 65 and over in the USA and the UK in the Journal of Social Policy, Work Employment and Society and the book collection Work, Health and Welbeing (edited by Sarah Vickerstaff, Chris Phillipson and Ross Wilkie, The Policy Press, 2001).
Ron Lee is Professor of Demography and Jordan Family Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also Directs the Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging. Before moving to Berkeley in 1979, he taught at the University of Michigan for eight years. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and a Corresponding Member of the British Academy. He co- directs the National Transfer Accounts project. Other research interests include probabilistic forecasting and evolu-tionary theories of aging.
George W. Leeson is Co- Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow in Demography at the University of Oxford. He is also Senior Research Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford, as well as being a member of the Oxford Martin School. Dr Leeson’s main research interests are in the socioeconomic–demographic aspects of ageing populations, covering both demographic modelling of population development and the analysis of national and international data sets. Dr Leeson is responsible for the Global Ageing Survey carried out in three waves in more than 20 countries in Europe, North and South America and Asia, and including approximately 45 000 people aged 40–79 years. His other research includes the inequali-ties of global ageing, and the demography of Europe and Latin America. Dr Leeson is currently in receipt of a British Academy International Partnership and Mobility Award working with colleagues at the University of Guanajuato- Leon in Mexico in social demography, and as a demographic expert he is a member of the European Commission’s team to develop a strategy for DG SANCO’s policy and legislative framework to deliver on EU food safety and nutrition to 2050.
Ewa Leś is a professor of Political Science and Social Welfare at Warsaw University in Poland. She is also the founder and chair of the Research Center on Non- Profit Organizations at the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as chair of the Centre for Development of Civil Society at the Institute of Social Policy at Warsaw University. Ewa has masters and PhD degrees in Political Science and Social Policy from Warsaw University. She has worked as project leader on several national and international research projects, including prin-cipal local associate for Poland under the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. Most recently she has completed a large project for the European Union, carrying out Poland’s first comprehensive survey of the social economy sector. Her most recent books include The Voluntary Sector in Post- Communist East- Central Europe, Voluntary
Organizations: A Comparative Study. From Philanthropy to Subsidiarity. She edited a book called Pictures of Social Economy (Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, Warsaw, 2008) and co- edited, with Stefania Bernini, Family Transformations in Poland and Italy and their
Implications for Family Policy (Warsaw University Press, 2010).
xvi International handbook on ageing and public policy
Zhenyu Li joined the Center for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College in October 2011. She earned her BA degree in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China and received her PhD in Mathematics from Indiana University–Bloomington. Since joining the CRR, Zhenyu has applied her mathematical modeling skills to constructing actuarial models of public sector pension plans and sto-chastic dynamic programming models of optimal household consumption and portfolio allocation.
B. Lindsay Lowell is Director of Policy Studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University. He was previously Director of Research at the Congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform. He has been Research Director of the Pew Hispanic Center, an analyst at the Department of Labor; and he taught at Princeton and the University of Texas. Dr Lowell has written over 150 articles and reports in journals such as Demography, American Economic Review,
Industrial Relations and Work and Occupations. His interests include immigration policy, labor force, development and mobility of the highly skilled. He is a demographer with a PhD from Brown University.
Peter Lloyd- Sherlock is Professor of Social Policy and International Development at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK. His main research interest is policy for older people in low- and middle- income countries, including pen-sions, health and long- term care. Recent publications include Population Ageing and
International Development: From Generalisation to Evidence (Policy Press, Bristol, 2010).
Annamaria Lusardi is the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Economics and Accountancy at the George Washington School of Business and Academic Director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center. Previously, she was the Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. She has also taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago Public Policy School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Columbia Business School. In 2008 she was a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. She is the recipient of the William E. Odom Visionary Leadership Award from the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, and the National Numeracy Network’s inaugural 2012 Steen Award.
Andy Mason is Professor of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa and Senior Fellow at the East–West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a member of the Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging (CEDA) at the University of California, Berkeley. He co- directs the National Transfer Accounts (www.ntaccounts.org) network, an inter-national project involving researchers from more than 35 countries developing a compre-hensive approach to measuring and studying the changes in population age structure and the generational economy in both rich and poor countries. His current research is con-cerned with the economic life cycle, intergenerational issues, and the effects of population change on development, economic growth, and public and private transfer systems.
Roddy McKinnon is Editor and Publication Manager with the International Social Security Association (ISSA), Geneva, Switzerland. He is managing editor of the quar-terly journal International Social Security Review, published by Wiley Blackwell in English, French, Spanish and German.
Allan M. Parnell is a demographer and Vice President of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, a not- for- profit research organization located outside Mebane, North Carolina. He received his AB with Honors in Geography, and his MA and PhD in Sociology, all from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to his current position, he was a visiting research associate at the East–West Center in Honolulu, Research Associate for the Committee on Population at the National Academy of Sciences, and member of Duke University’s sociology faculty. He has been the principal investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute on Aging.
Paola Profeta is Associate Professor of Public Economics at Bocconi University, Research Fellow of Dondena and Econpubblica and Research Affiliate of CESifo. Her research interests are in the field of public economics, in particular social security, political economy, gender economics and comparative tax systems. She has published in international journals, among which are European Economic Review, Economic
Journal, Oxford Economic Papers, Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economic Theory,
International Tax and Public Finance, European Journal of Political Economy and Public
Choice. She regularly writes in the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.
Nélida Redondo is a research sociologist and professor at the University ISALUD and is also a specialized adviser on ageing of the population and on Argentina’s elderly popu-lation’s living conditions at the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC). She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires (1972) and an MA in Sociology from de Latino America Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) (1990). She earned her doctorate ‘summa cum laude’ in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires in 2006. Dra Redondo is author of articles, books and chapters in international handbooks related to the field of sociology of ageing and population ageing.
Mariano Sánchez, Professor of Sociology at the University of Granada in Spain and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education at the Pennsylvania State University (2012–13), has been Technical Coordinator of the Spanish Social Network of Experiences with Intergenerational Relations in the period 2005–12, former co- editor of the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, and member of the Management Committee of the International Consortium for Intergenerational Programmes. He has co- authored chapters on intergenerational relationships in two recent White Papers on active ageing published in Spain. Professor Sánchez co- directs the online course Qualification of Intergenerational Work Professionals.
Chiara Saraceno was Professor of Sociology at the University of Turin until 2006, when she was appointed Research Professor at the Wissenshaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. Retired, she now lives in Turin, where she is honorary fellow at the Collegio Carlo Alberto. Her research topics concern comparative family, gender and intergenerational arrangements, comparative welfare regimes, social inequalities and poverty. Among her recent publications are ‘Towards an integrated approach for the analysis of gender equity in policies supporting paid work and care responsibilities’ (with W. Keck), Demographic Research, 25 (11), 2011; ‘Social inequalities in facing old- age dependency: a bi- generational perspective’, Journal of European Social Policy, 20 (1), 2010; ‘Can we identify intergenerational policy regimes in Europe?’ (with W. Keck),
xviii International handbook on ageing and public policy
European Societies, 12 (5), 2010; and, as editor, Families, Ageing and Social Policies (Edward Elgar, 2008).
Kimberly Spencer- Suarez is a graduate student at Columbia University pursuing research at the intersection of social work practice and administration, gerontology and socio- legal justice. Before commencing doctoral studies, she acquired practice experience in community organizations serving disadvantaged populations as well as in community- based and inpatient hospice care. A California native, Ms Spencer- Suarez earned her BA in History (2008) and MSW (2012) from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Virpi Timonen is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Ageing at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She has published over 50 articles and chapters on social gerontology and welfare- state responses to population ageing in Ageing & Society, Journal of Aging
Studies, Journal of Family Issues, Research on Aging, Journal of Social Policy and other leading international journals and books. Virpi Timonen has written five books, includ-ing Ageing Societies: A Comparative Introduction (Open University Press, 2008). She is a co- investigator in the Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing, TILDA.
Fernando M. Torres- Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional and policy arenas. He is a professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at UCLA, an adjunct pro-fessor of Gerontology at USC, and director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging. He has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and most recently Chair of the Social Welfare Department. He has written six books and over l00 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and
Change in America (Auburn House, 1992) and Lessons from Three Nations, Volumes I
and II (Baywood Publishing, 2007). His academic contributions have earned him mem-bership in the prestigious Academies of Public Administration, Gerontology and Social Insurance. His research spans important topics of health and long- term care, disability, entitlement reform and the politics of aging. In 20l0 he received his third presidential appointment (with Senate confirmation) when President Barack Obama appointed him Vice Chair of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that reports to the Congress and the White House on federal matters related to disability policy.
Sarah Vickerstaff is Professor of Work and Employment, University of Kent, UK. Her research focuses on paid work and the life course, especially at the beginning and end of working life. Recent publications include Work, Health and Well- being: The
Challenges of Managing Health at Work (eds S. Vickerstaff, C. Phillipson and R. Wilkie, Policy Press, 2012) and Encouraging Labour Market Activity among 60–64 Year Olds (eds S. Vickerstaff, W. Lorretto, J. Billings, P. Brown, L. Mitton, T. Parkin and P. White, Department for Work and Pensions, Research Report No. 531, 2008).
Bert Vrijhoef is Professor of Health Systems and Policy at the National University of Singapore and Professor of Chronic Care at the Scientific Centre for Care and Welfare, Tilburg University, The Netherlands. He is principal investigator of studies on chronic care management, telemonitoring, advanced nursing and redesigning healthcare delivery in the Netherlands, other European countries and Singapore. He has written over 150 scientific publications and was awarded the International Harkness Fellowship by the
Commonwealth Fund in 2008. He holds an MSc in Health Policy & Management from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a PhD in Medical Sociology from Maastricht University.
Jeni Warburton is the John Richards Chair in Rural Aged Care Research at La Trobe University in Wodonga, Victoria, Australia. Jeni has 20 years’ experience of research into social policy, particularly relating to issues associated with an ageing population. Her main areas of expertise are in healthy and productive ageing; as well as volunteering and community, with her current research focusing on ageing in rural communities.
Anthony Webb is a research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. He earned his doctorate in economics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2001. He holds a BA in industrial economics from the University of Nottingham, UK (1975) and an MA in economics from the University of Manchester, UK (1994). Before beginning his doctorate, Dr Webb was employed by the British gov-ernment, providing policy advice on taxation of personal savings. His published work includes investigations of the impact of pension type on the age of retirement and a number of studies of retirement asset decumulation.
Ed Westerhout is affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, Department of Macro and International Economics, as a researcher and teacher of the Macroeconomics course and the Public Finance and Fiscal Policy course. He is also affiliated with CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, as a researcher in the field of pensions. He is a research fellow at Netspar. Also, he regularly publishes blogs on his website http://edwest-erhout.nl. Previously, he has been affiliated with the research department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the University of Amsterdam, where he then has been teaching economic growth, monetary and fiscal policies. At CPB, he has been leader of projects on ageing, pension reform and the healthcare sector. Ed Westerhout has published in leading academic journals such as Economica, Health Economics and International Tax