Social Security reform: implications for women.

Despite recent economic gains for women, a substantial gender gap in financial security during old age remains, making women more dependent than men upon Social Security. Social Security plays an important role in providing for women's economic security. The implications for women of several proposed changes in Social Security policy, including the call for the partial privatization of Social Security via the introduction of individual accounts, are analyzed. Many of the proposals would have the effect of asking women, particularly low-income women, to shoulder a disproportionate share of the risks and burdens associated with the changes.

International developments in social security privatization: what risk to women?

Throughout the world, older women are generally poorer than men. In an era when Social Security programs are increasingly under challenge by advocates of savings and pension schemes administered by the private sector, there is a need to assess the relative advantages of different public/private approaches for dealing with older women's financial needs. What would happen to women if more of the burden were shifted from the public sector to the private sector? This article presents an overview of women's vulnerability in old age and examines the role of public and private pensions in meeting their income needs. It then discusses approaches to Social Security privatization and the special issues for women raised by these issues. Finally, the issues and approaches discussed are illustrated by developments in the United States and Australia.

The challenge of an aging work force: keeping older workers employed and employable.

This article reviews labor-force trends and older-worker employment policies in Japan and the United States. Both countries have aging work forces, but Japan's labor force is and for some time has been older than that of the United States. Japan's Ministry of Labor began addressing older-worker issues over 30 years ago and in the ensuing years has promulgated numerous initiatives to extend working life. Mandatory retirement, however, remains both legal and common in Japan, yet labor-force participation rates are higher for older persons in that country than in the United States, where mandatory retirement is illegal. Japan's older-worker programs and policies clearly seem to have an impact on labor-force rates, although those rates are dropping among the elderly in Japan as well as in the United States. The transferability of these programs and policies to the United States is discussed.

Rethinking retirement-age policy in the United States and Canada.

More than legislation, the recent amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act also symbolize a growing interest in the older working population, both in the United States and Canada, particularly the question of their "failing" job skills and the effects of retirement age on the economy. Sociologist Rix examines this issue in terms of demographic, economic and biomedical factors, discussing their implications for management, employee counselors, insurance and pension planners, the tax payers and employees of all ages.