Social Exclusion in Later Life, Evidence from the European Social Survey

Abstract

AbstractSocial Exclusion (SE) is a multidimensional concept, broader than just poverty or economic exclusion, that aims at expressing to what extent people have the opportunity to participate in society.We analyse how SE evolved for a certain birth cohort (respondents born between 1945 and 1953) along time, to gain a life-course perspective, and for the same age group in two different periods, to study how the situation of individuals in later life stages has changed from one period to the other. Our paper explores the recently updated data from the European Social Survey (ESS, Round 9 – 2018), combined with data from Round 1 – 2002, to obtain an insight into the evolution of SE among the older population in 15 European countries, by producing measures of SE including different domains (Social Relations, Civic Participation, Neighbourhood and Community and Health and Well-being). The same birth cohort (respondents born between 1945 and 1953) is analysed in 2002 and in 2018. We investigate the association of SE with the type of participation in the labour market, which, according to the rules developed by the welfare state institutions, is expected to change for that cohort, between the two periods. And, indeed, we find evidence of such association. Differences between the situation of men and women are highlighted, with higher levels of SE experienced by women in most domains.