Search results

Population aging in many countries has become a fundamental concern of public policy. One reason is fears that increasing numbers of elderly will place disproportionate burdens on their children in order to fund public pensions and health-related services. This analysis first discusses basic principles for assessing this question of intergenerational fairness. It then applies an empirically-based overlapping cohort dynamic microsimulation model for a quantitative analysis of the flows of taxes and cash and in-kind transfers for successive birth cohorts. The simulations cover both exogenous factors – specifically trends in life expectancy and the strength of the economy, and policy-related factors – specifically raising the age of entitlement to public pensions from age 65 to 70, and price versus relative wage indexing. The analysis concludes, among other points, that intergenerational differences are significantly smaller than intra-generational variations, and that the parents of the baby-boom generation are likely to benefit from the largest lifetime net transfers of any birth cohort from 1890 to 2010.

This chapter adopts a reflective approach exploring and setting out the contrasting factors that led to the establishment of the subdiscipline in both countries. The factors included the role of key individuals and their respective academic backgrounds and specialisations within each country’s higher education system. Furthermore, attention is given to the particular circumstances in a case analysis comparison of the oldest programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. This sheds light upon the factors linked to the disproportionate success profile for the sociology of sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An analysis of scholars and programs within each country reveals important differences aligned with the politics of funding and the variety and extent of systematic structures. Additionally, scholars’ specialisations and preferences reveal a broad offering but are primarily linked to globalisation, gender relations, indigeneity and race relations, social policy, and media studies. This work has been undertaken variously via the critical tradition including Birmingham School cultural studies, ethnographic and qualitative approaches and, more recently by some, a postmodern poststructuralist trend. Lastly, along with a brief discussion of current issues, future challenges are set out.

This chapter provides readers with a summary of sport sociology in the United States. It begins with a brief overview of sport in the United States before describing the development of the sociology of sport in the United States and some of the major contemporary patterns in sport research. They key movement in US sport sociology was the critical-cultural turn that took place during the 1980s and 1990s when critical theory and feminism became dominant approaches to research. Scholarship in the 21st century has largely developed upon that turn and is generally qualitative and cultural. Contemporary US sport sociology is a critical endeavor heavily influenced by cultural studies, post-structuralism, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, post-colonial theory, and theories of globalization. Despite a fairly consistent approach to sport research in the United States, sport sociology remains contentious and in disunity. This chapter argues that the contention and disunity results from broader structural patterns that guide sport sociologists’ social actions.