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a Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Correspondence: Anne Foner, PhD, 200 West 86th Street 9J, New York, NY 10024. E-mail: foneram{at}aol.com.
A major concern about population aging—the increase in the numbers, proportions, and capacities of older people in the society—is that it will produce conflicts between working-age and older people. For example, in a widely quoted article, the economist Lester Thurow 1996
asserted that "in the years ahead, class warfare is apt to be redefined as the young against the old, rather than the poor against the rich." Why? Because, he argues, the increasing size of the older population will cause an explosion in public pension costs and health-care spending for older people. Yet, while the political influence of the elderly population will assure the maintenance of old age entitlements, it is not the old who will bear the major burden of paying for them. Rather, according to Thurow, financing the rising costs of programs benefiting the old will come at the expense of nonelderly people, who tend to be less affluent than their elders. Under this scenario of age conflict, there could well be obstacles to age integration as the working-age population resists opening up important social roles to their elders and shuns cross-age interactions.
In this essay I argue that although age conflicts, if they were to emerge, could counteract trends toward age integration, there is an opposite outcome: that age integration will offset tendencies to age conflicts. In fact, past history supports such an eventuality.
Predictions of age-based conflict are not new. For years we have been warned about coming age wars as the working-age population rebels against the direct and indirect burdens of supporting public programs favoring older people, but yielding few clear benefits to younger adults. However, despite these dire predictions, young and the middle-aged adults have not risen up against the old or against policies that benefit the old. Indeed, there has been, and still is, widespread support among all age strata for keeping the Social Security program in the United States healthy and making sure that older people get adequate medical care (e.g., Bengtson and Harootyan 1994; Cook, Marshall, Marshall, and Kaufman 1994).
In short, the expected "age wars" have not erupted. The working-age population has not challenged public policies that favor older people, policies that appear to operate against the self-interests of young and middle-aged adults. This, despite the increase in the numbers of old people, particularly old-old people (aged 85+). Alternatively, there are signs of increasing age integration as age barriers to social roles are loosening (Riley and Riley 1994). How can we account for this apparent anomaly?
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Forestalling Age Wars |
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These arguments are fairly straightforward—indeed have been incorporated into public discussions. In addition to considering these points, I will discuss several related conceptual themes and explore more fully the complexity of the underlying issues.
The Nature of Age Systems in Society.
As described elsewhere (Foner, A., 1974,1984,1995), the mechanisms noted above for offsetting age conflicts are related to essential characteristics of age structuring in society.
First, fundamental microlevel social structures to which people are attached, such as the family, are age heterogeneous. They fit the age-integrated model. In these structures people of different ages are linked together, interact, and forge intergenerational bonds. The significance of such heterogeneity is highlighted by a contrast with the class situation. Microlevel social structures—again, the family being a prominent example—are typically class homogeneous. These class-homogeneous structures provide a solid basis for class identity and allegiance and serve to insulate members from intimate contact with people from other classes. In short, they promote solidarity within classes, but not necessarily bonds across class lines.
Second, the inevitability of aging encourages young and middle-aged adults to look to the future and to concern themselves with their status when they themselves will become old. Hence, people of working age may support publicly maintained old-age pension systems and other publicly subsidized programs for the old because they stand to benefit from them in their later years.
These two features of age structuring help to explain why potential age conflicts have not materialized. But, in addition, other more complex issues are involved.
What Do We Mean by Age Conflicts?
The terms "age wars" or "generation wars" typically refer to societal-wide cleavages between young and old—not to disagreements between young and old that crop up in structures within the society: the family, the workplace, or community organizations. The situation in the 1960s and early 1970s may be a paradigmatic case. Then, the issues confronting society—questions of ideals and morality— were not diffused by mechanisms that operate to avert age conflicts. At that time, many young people were concerned about such moral questions as just and unjust wars and the rights of all people, not just the young. These were issues that the young (typically those at college age) perceived required immediate resolution and could not be put off in the hope of possible future improvement. Rather than finding common ground with older adults, they tended to see older adults as obstacles to forging a peaceful and just society. As young people called into question both foreign policy and domestic policy regarding equal rights, they proclaimed that basic changes were needed in the society, precisely the kinds of changes that dismayed mature and older adults. And the young activists went on marches, held mass rallies, organized sit-ins, and engaged in civil disobedience to promote their causes.
In light of these past age conflicts, the term "age wars" may seem overdrawn as a description of age relations in society today, or even what has been predicted for the future—barring any resurgence of the "all or nothing" issues that aroused many young people in the 1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, whenever disagreements among age strata emerged, they typically involved age-related economic policies and hardly constituted a form of warfare. Rather, they have been of the same order as many economic issues that come before political bodies and around which compromises are crafted.
Age Inequalities as a Basis of Age Conflicts.
It is the apparent unequal costs and benefits of public programs for the old borne by younger working adults that some expect to trigger age conflicts in the society. We know, however, that social inequalities often do not lead to conflicts between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. One reason is that inequalities are legitimated.
Consider publicly supported benefits for retired workers. These benefits are legitimated on the basis of their past contributions. Opinion polls indicate, for example, that there is widespread agreement among the public that old people have paid their dues, paid their taxes, and they are owed. In other words, they are deserving of public support.
In the case of age inequalities, another mechanism may also be operating. Some aspects of age inequalities are not easily observable because they are constructed by macrolevel institutions. For example, congressional and executive branch budget decisions in the United States have produced federal expenditures for older adults that are greater than outlays for children. According to some commentators (e.g., Thurow 1996), these expenditures on the elderly population are squeezing government investments in infrastructure, education, and research development. Although such disparities in spending differentially affect the young, middle-aged and old populations, it is an open question whether people of different ages perceive these policies as representing well-defined age inequalities and how much attention they pay to developments in these national policies.
Given the legitimization of public health benefits favoring the elderly population and the obscuring of some mechanisms leading to age inequalities at the societal level, the motivation of the young and the middle-aged to challenge the old and policies favoring the old is likely to be attenuated. Such a situation provides a favorable environment for increasing age integration.
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The Macro/Micro Connection |
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speaks of "making parent rich at the cost of making children poor," a zero/sum situation where benefits for one age category come at the expense of another age category. I argue to the contrary. There is a connection between macrolevel and microlevel social structures that serves to avert age conflicts. Thus, while entitlements for older adults are financed and dispensed at the macrolevel, a different process is at work in the age-integrated family at the microlevel. At the microlevel, there are intrafamily exchanges that often result in a circulation of benefits from older to younger family members. The relative financial security afforded the old by public programs permits them to contribute to their offspring and grandchildren. Thus, rather than parents becoming rich at the expense of the young, the young benefit both directly and indirectly from public funds received by older adults.
The contributions that parents make to offspring take several forms. There are outright gifts and loans. Unlike some images of the old as recipients of aid from children, reports from national surveys indicate that elders give more than they receive (Bengtson and Harootyan 1994; Spreitzer, Schoeni, and Rao 1996). One study found that almost half of parents with adult children (parents both under and over age 65) report having given their children large sums of money at some time. The average value of these gifts was $5,000; among parents who were 65 and over, the average value was $8,000 (Bengtson and Harootyan 1994).
Bequests constitute another form of contribution from older family members. Rossi and Rossi 1990 found in their Boston area sample that one half of the respondents either are or were beneficiaries of their parents' estates, and about 14% of their grandparents' estates. Over two thirds were beneficiaries in their parents' insurance policies.
It is not only in the United States that such patterns of giving are found. Attias-Donfut 1995 reports similar processes in France. She shows that money circulates from the old (average age 77, ranging from 66–92 in her national sample) to the middle generation (average age 51, ranging from 49–53) and sometimes skipping a generation, going directly to the young (average age 28, ranging from 19–36). As in the United States, such gifts and loans made by the old within families are facilitated by public pensions and other benefits that elders receive.
To be sure, there are differences among families in intergenerational help patterns. For example, in the United States, members of White households were more likely than those in Black and Hispanic households to report having given a gift or loan of over $200 to family members outside their households (Spreitzer et al. 1996). However, other families may be more likely to provide assistance across generations within the household. For example, Black children are more likely than White children to have lived with a grandparent some time before they were age 18 (Szinovacz 1996). Clearly, these grandparents were providing intergenerational material support in the form of food and shelter.
In some poor communities, pensions to the older residents play a related role. Nancy Foner 1984 notes that in some poor Native American communities, where families are hard pressed for cash, old age pensioners provide a steady income source for households. Sometimes this income is even the mainstay of the domestic economy.
Quite apart from direct financial help from older family members, pension payments to older people may help younger family members indirectly. Not having to provide financial support for older people in the family means that more funds are available for spending on children (Bengtson and Harootyan 1994).
In sum, I suggest that redistribution from young to old at the societal level is transformed into redistribution from old to young at the family level through gifts, loans, and ultimately inheritance provided by the older family members. Rather than an inherent conflict of interest between the old and the young, there are mutual interests among the several generations within the age-integrated family. And these mutual interests have macrolevel consequences as they help shore up, rather than undermine, public support for old age entitlements (but see Bengtson and Harootyan 1994, for a somewhat different interpretation).
The Role of the Family.
The foregoing discussion speaks of the relevance for societal level policies of family structures and relations within the family. The emphasis has been on commonalities in material interests between young and old family members. But the age integration of the family is not merely a matter of mutual economic interests. Family members are linked by affective ties as well, and these too have implications beyond the family.
We know that it is family members who provide most of the care for older people who are dependent. We know also that older people and younger family members are in frequent contact with each other. This is not to say that interactions among family members always run smoothly. Often there are long-standing dissatisfactions, lifestyle differences, and divergent beliefs that divide young and old in the family. But in the crunch, family members typically come through to help and support other family members when there are personal crises. In Matilda Riley's terms (1983), the "latent matrix" of kin relationships is activated. There can be ups and downs in kin relationships, but in the end it tends to be family members who aid their kin in times of need.
Regarding the broad implications of such family solidarity, I would argue that just as family members pull together when there are family crises, having to cope with such family problems carries over to supportive attitudes about societal level policies benefiting the old. It is not only such pooled efforts to deal with family problems that contribute to intergenerational cohesion; family members generally have built bonds to each other over many years. These ties help counteract any tendencies among younger family members to work for or support societal policies that might hurt the older members.
In short, age relationships within the family and kin network are multifaceted. With its strong material and affective base, the family has an impact not only on individuals and relations within the family, but influences the way family members view public issues related to age.
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The Intersection of Age and Class |
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; Harris 1981). In my view, focusing on the threat of age conflicts masks underlying class differences and class interests concerning age-related public programs. On the one hand, entitlement programs for the old have strong support in the middle class and the working class. On the other hand, profit-making organizations and high-income classes see potential tax and other hoped-for financial benefits in curtailing Social Security and other social welfare programs for the old. But efforts to justify curtailing Social Security are never made explicitly in terms of these narrow economic interests. Rather, the rationale is stated in seemingly more public-spirited terms—in the name of "our children's future."
So far, class forces working for basic restructuring of public programs for the older population have not prevailed. One might argue that these forces have been eclipsed by a united front among people of all ages to support the preservation of these programs, particularly in middle-income and working-class groups. While the presumably persuasive slogan, "Save our children," may have resonance across age groups and across classes, weakening Social Security does not appear to be a generally acceptable option as a way to safeguard the future of today's children.
But the past is not necessarily an adequate barometer of the future. The problems of an aging society might become serious enough to drive a wedge throughout the society between young and old. In such an eventuality, the relationship between social divisions based on age and those based on class, as these bear on age-related policies, could change. If age conflicts over these issues were to erupt, these age cleavages could strengthen class forces in favor of curtailing public entitlements for the older population. The preceding analysis, however, suggests an opposite interpretation. Despite the undoubted problems to come as we confront an aging society, age conflict over societal resources is just one possible outcome.
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Concluding Thoughts |
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, for a general discussion of structural lag or a mismatch between structures and lives and the resulting pressures for structural change). But this implicitly assumes that there will be a rebellion among the working-age population against social welfare structures for the old (and thus indirectly against the old themselves). Throughout this essay I have suggested that there are social forces related to age in society that operate to stave off age conflicts. Among the factors that have helped to ward off age conflict over public programs benefiting older people, I have emphasized two integrative mechanisms: (1) the mutual economic interests in these programs of family members of all ages, and (2) affective intergenerational bonds that unite families around the needs of all the members. And I have argued that these microlevel phenomena have affected macrolevel policies. These same mechanisms may continue to function in the future as the number of old people continues to mount. It is possible that strong intergenerational bonds within the family will be extended to other social structures and to the society as a whole to work for solutions to the broader societal problems we face and to preserve viable components of present programs. Finally, on a broader, theoretical level, let me suggest one answer to the question implicit in the title of this essay: What is the linkage between age conflict and age integration? As I have argued, societal-wide age conflicts can be muted by a number of mechanisms, even as the number of old people rises. To the extent that age conflicts are dampened, conditions are favorable for increased age integration in the society. If age integration proceeds further, it is possible, of course, that there will be age-related flare-ups in particular institutions. But, as age barriers to a wide range of social roles are loosened, as people of all ages mingle and develop common interests at the workplace, in community organizations, and in schools and colleges, it will be difficult to mount broad age conflicts in the society.
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Acknowledgments |
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