Trajectories of Poverty in Old-Age

Most current research on old-age poverty assumes it to be a largely stable condition. This assumption is rooted in the fact that in many Western industrialized countries, income during retirement primarily comes from pensions rather than employment, and these pension incomes tend to remain stable over time. However, we argue that this perspective requires reevaluation.

Our previous analyses of longitudinal retirement dynamics, based on two waves of a large gerontological survey in Switzerland, reveal that old-age poverty is not static. Instead, individuals experience movements both into and out of poverty. This study extends our earlier work by adopting a long-term perspective, focusing on entire poverty trajectories in old age.

Methodologically, we use waves 1-9 of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for Switzerland. Leveraging this longitudinal dataset, we apply sequence analysis to identify typical poverty trajectories and their socio-demographic correlates. Furthermore, we incorporate a more comprehensive definition of poverty that includes recent advances integrating wealth, referred to as joint-income-wealth-poverty (JIWP) measures.