Research

How to move past ageism in Europe (Digest): Age-friendly means resilient. That's why ageism undermines societal resilience. Luckily, the roadmap to an age-friendly Europe already exists: Research and the imagination of Europe's citizens. These are the most promising anti-ageism approaches.

What shapes decisions for or against parenthood (Digest): When a society is hit by crisis, many people postpone their childbearing plans – or even abandon them. Policymakers wish to know how to build resilience for young people. It appears that good health and stable partnerships are key for this.

The risk of "pension gaps" (Digest): The term "pay gap" is widely known, but how about the pension gap in older age? How equal will our bank accounts be as we age? The FutuRes team at TU Vienna use mathematical simulations to examine this question. They are finding indications for high risks of inequality.

Population ageing and skill crisis: Are migration and automation possible solutions? (Policy Paper) Robots need a lot of investment, if they should substitute a skills shortage in Europe. However, this could pay off. With all necessary caveats of uncertainty, the team at University of Southampton finds that automation will likely help boost the economy. Especially, they find that in their model simulations, automation did not affect wages as much as often feared. Title: "Resilience and vulnerability - migration, ageing and technological change" (2024) 

Overcoming ageism for crisis resilience (Report): In times of crisis, a resilient society relies heavily on intergenerational cooperation. Ageism can strain these intergenerational relationships and hinder the development of social networks. This report is a transdisciplinary cooperation to explore strategies against ageism. It draws from two complementary sources: an extensive literature review; and the ideas provided by more than 130 participants of the FutuRes Citizen Workshop. Title: "Overcoming ageism through education, intergenerational exchange, and law and policies: facts and guidelines" (2024)

The social factors which shape decisions on parenthood (Working Paper): The team at Warsaw School of Economics explore decision making processes for or against parenthood. How do selected risk factors influence the transition from uncertainty about fertility intentions to fertility intentions - positive or negative? The study uses data from the Gender and Generation Programme Survey (GGP, 2024) from six countries: Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland and the UK. Title: "Fertility trends in Europe: structural change, shocks and resilience" (2024)

Working Paper: The team at Warsaw School of Economics investigate intergenerational transfers. How do they support social capital, particularly at young and older ages (i.e. from parents, children, or partners)? The researchers analyse the role both of monetary and non-monetary (time) transfers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on this issue. Title: "Inter- and intra-generational relations in the light of building resilience" (2024)

Working Paper: "Resilience" has been the European Commission's compass for policy since its 2020 Foresight Report. In this paper, the Futures team at Warsaw School of Economics proposes an approach to measure resilience in social sciences, using data from the Generation and Gender Survey. Title: "Towards resilient early-stage life courses in Europe“ (2024)

Working Paper: Resilience can be measured through various indicators and scales. The team at Warsaw School of Economics approached it by the set of individual characteristics. These characteristics describe health status, mental and financial well-being. Title: "Life course employment patterns and resilient adult-stage life courses in selected European countries" (2024)

Technical report: Can migration and job automation help address some of the challenges to the labour markets in Europe? The team at the University of Southampton presents a design and initial analysis of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which will ultimately serve as a tool to examine the vulnerability of European socio-economic systems. As an illustration, we use a case study of the German and Polish economies. Title: "Specification of dynamic models for examining resilience" (2024)

Theoretical framework: This working paper identifies patterns in which fertility dynamics reacted to two major crises: the Great Recession in the late 2000s and the Covid pandemic. While in some countries, fertility trends changed considerable, in others they quickly recovered to the pre-crises level. An analytical framework is presented to investigate resilience in fertility dynamics in Europe, including micro, meso and macro factors. Title: "Resilience as a theoretical foundation for fertility dynamics" (2024)

Theoretical framework: In this report, the team at Bocconi University establishes a conceptual framework for resilience at individual and institutional levels. The framework is tailored for effective policymaking and tested in a case study on the COVID-19 pandemic. Title: "Resilience in Policy Design - What makes policies resilience-enhancing?" (2024)

Prototype: The team at TU Vienna has established a prototype for a model which will later quantify the resilience of various pension reforms. This technical note explains how individual behavior interacts with macroeconomic and institutional constraints, considering idiosyncratic risks. Title: "Theoretical foundation of the dynamic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, heterogeneous households and family networks" (2023)