Work, Family, State and Market: Income Packaging for Older Households

We use the concept of “income packaging” to explore the economic position of older people historically and comparatively. Income packaging focuses on the evolving economic role of the State in occupational pensions, earnings and assets. By contrast, the life course perspective focuses on the relations across generations. While these approaches differ in emphasis, they also overlap and are complementary. The idea of income packaging was first developed by Rein, Rainwater and Schwartz (1986) in a comparative study of three mature welfare states (the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States) in order to highlight the importance of examining both the source and the level of income and to correct for the neglect of enterprise and the overemphasis on the development of the welfare state. The concept has been used by historians to describe the coping strategy of older people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on these historical studies, we examine the evolution of incomepackaging among older people over time and across countries.