O'Rand A M
Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Gerontologist. 1996 Apr;36(2):230-8. doi: 10.1093/geront/36.2.230.
The explanation of increasing heterogeneity and inequality within aging cohorts is a central concern of the life-course perspective and common ground for demographers, economists, historians, sociologists, and psychologists alike. Income and wealth inequality among the aged is one area of shared interest where cross-disciplinary fertilization is occurring. While indices of aged economic inequality applied across different data sets replicate the level of inequality among the elderly, theoretical and methodological concerns are focused more and more on identifying and specifying the long-term interactions between institutional and life-course processes producing this outcome. Institutional mechanisms incorporated in opportunity structures such as labor markets and pensions stratify the availability of resources and rewards, and they interact with life-course processes related to labor force history and job mobility to produce complex patterns of cumulative advantage and cumulative disadvantage. However, the examination of long-term mechanisms of stratification requires finer-grained observations of work, employer, and pension histories than current data-collection strategies afford. Two biases--the steady worker bias and the one pension bias--are inherent in most longitudinal data bases and hamper progress in our understanding of the production of aged inequality.
老年群体内部异质性和不平等加剧的原因，是生命历程视角的核心关注点，也是人口学家、经济学家、历史学家、社会学家和心理学家的共同关注点。老年人的收入和财富不平等是一个共同感兴趣的领域，不同学科正在在此相互交融。虽然应用于不同数据集的老年经济不平等指数反映了老年人之间的不平等程度，但理论和方法上的关注点越来越多地集中在识别和明确产生这一结果的制度与生命历程过程之间的长期相互作用上。劳动力市场和养老金等机会结构中所包含的制度机制，会对资源和回报的可得性进行分层，并且它们与劳动力历史和工作流动相关的生命历程过程相互作用，从而产生累积优势和累积劣势的复杂模式。然而，对长期分层机制的研究需要比当前数据收集策略所能提供的更细致的工作、雇主和养老金历史观察。大多数纵向数据库中都存在两种偏差——稳定工作者偏差和单一养老金偏差，这阻碍了我们对老年不平等产生过程的理解。
