Levels and patterns of internal migration in Europe: A cohort perspective

Europe displays important variations in the level of internal migration, with a clear spatial gradient of high mobility in northern and western Europe but lower mobility in the south and east. However, cross-national variation in levels of internal migration remains poorly understood, because it is analysed almost exclusively using cross-sectional data and period measures. This paper seeks to advance understanding of cross-national variation in migration levels in 14 European countries by drawing on a recently proposed suite of migration cohort measures, coupled with internationally comparable retrospective residential histories. It shows that differences in migration levels are mainly attributable to variation in the extent of repeat movement, which is underpinned by the differences in mean ages at first and last move that together delineate the average length of migration careers. Cohort analysis provides a robust foundation for exploring the demographic mechanisms underpinning variation in migration levels across countries and over time.     

Volunteer work, informal help, and care among the 50+ in Europe: Further evidence for ‘linked’ productive activities at older ages

Taking a cross-national perspective, we investigate linkages between volunteer work, informal help, and care among Europeans aged 50 or older. Based on 27,297 personal interviews from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we estimate univariate and multivariate probit models, which allow us to analyze the interrelationship between those non-market productive activities. There is substantial variation in the participation in volunteering, helping, and caring between countries. Independent of the general level of activity in a country, we find evidence for a complementary and interdependent relationship between all three activities. Our findings not only suggest an important role of societal opportunity structures in elders’ productive engagement, but also support notions of the existence of a general motivation to be active.     

QUALITY,TECHNOLOGY, AND GLOBAL MANUFACTURING

It has been more than a decade since the quality movement was reborn in U.S. industry, and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the results of some of these programs. At the same time, product and service R&D is on the rise. These trends are incorporated here into an extension of the Utterback-Abernathy model to examine the quality, technology, and performance relationship. Six hundred durable goods firms in 20 countries were surveyed and it was found that technology significantly moderated the association of R&D intensity and total quality management (tqm) with market share, controlling for industry category. In high technology firms, R&D intensity was significantly associated with market share; in low technology firms, tqm was significantly associated with market share. R&D intensity and tqm were significantly and inversely related, while R&D intensity and computer-aided manufacturing (cam) were significantly and directly related.     

Depression in later life: A closer look at the gender gap

Gender differences in depressive symptoms have been extensively documented, with women reporting a higher number of depressive symptoms than men. However, studies offer different explanations for why such a gap exists. The goal of the current paper is to analyze how much of the observed gender gap in depression may be attributed to (1) compositional versus (2) reporting differences or (3) differences in reactivity to adversities. We contribute to this literature by testing, net of compositional differences, whether the relationship between reporting behavior and depressive symptoms is gendered and whether accounting for the possibility of gender-specific reactivity alters the structure of the gender gap at older ages. Our results show that the observed gender gap in depression (1) only partially derives from compositional differences; (2) is not an artifact of a gender-specific reporting style; and remarkably (3) men appear more sensitive to adversities.     

Working Hours Flexibility and Timing of Retirement: Findings from Europe

This study investigates how flexibility in working hours affects retirement timing. It tests the assumption that decreasing weekly working hours delays retirement and extends working life. Using data from four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we analyze whether a shift from full-time to part-time work delays retirement. Results show that older workers who reduce their working hours retire earlier than those who stay in full-time employment. The effect is stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in Scandinavian countries. No interaction effects for gender and work strain are found. We conclude that part-time work at the end of the career, as a means to extend working life, should be reevaluated.     

Changing attitudes to risk at older ages: The role of health and other life events

This paper investigates risk attitudes at older ages in 14 European countries. Older individuals report lower willingness to take risks in all countries. Using panel data we are able to show that this relationship between financial risk attitudes and age is not due to cohort effects or selective mortality. We also show that key mechanisms driving this change with age are health changes and other life events – in our preferred specification around half of the overall evolution of risk attitudes with age can be explained by health shocks, retirement, and widowhood or marital change that occur increasingly frequently as individuals age. These life-events are a particularly important explanation of the evolution of risk attitudes for women.