During the last decades inequality has risen not only in respect to income and wealth but also in respect to health and longevity (e.g. Chetty et al., 2016; Case and Deaton, 2017). To understand the recent trends in inequality, it is important to consider that people are most vulnerable during childhood and during old age. This fact has triggered a specific interest in the evolution of inequality over the life course (e.g. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015; OECD, 2017).

The goal of this project was to develop a cohesive framework for understanding and addressing the economic and demographic impacts of growing inequality. To do so, the RIWAG project pursued several important objectives:

1. To construct a rich life-cycle model to trace out how initial heterogeneity is transmitted into unequal behaviours and outcomes over the lifecycle.
2. To study how different policies lead to different dynamics over the lifecycle and how this affects intra-generational inequality.
3. To integrate the life-cycle model into a general equilibrium framework to study how inequality evolves across cohorts (inter-generational inequality).
4. To explore the scope for policy-making in mitigating inequality within and across cohorts.

Within the project, we have shown that medical and labour technological progress have triggered a negative selection effect that explains the increasing inequality in life expectancy, that wealth reduces the risk taken on the job, and that inequality in life expectancy makes most European pension systems regressive.

Published articles

M Sánchez-Romero, A Prskawetz. 2024. Socio-Economic Consequences of Increased Longevity in Contemporary Populations. In Lemaître, J.-F., and Pavard, S. (eds). The Biodemography of Ageing and Longevity. Cambridge University Press. 353-374.

M Sánchez-Romero, and A Prskawetz. 2023. Social security reforms in heterogeneous aging populations. In Bloom, D. E., Sousa-Poza, A., and Sunde, U. (eds). The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Ageing. Taylor and Francis, London. eBook ISBN 9781003150398

M Sánchez-Romero, P Schuster, and A Prskawetz. 2023. Redistributive effects of pension reforms: Who are the winners and losers? Journal of Pension Economics and Finance. doi:10.1017/S147474722300015X

Work in progress

M Kerndler, A Prskawetz, and M Sánchez-Romero. A life-cycle model of risk-taking on the job.

M Sánchez-Romero, M Marsicano, and M Kuhn. 2024. Explaining the increasing inequality in life expectancy across income groups. IIASA Working Paper. Laxenburg, Austria: WP-24-011

Redistributive effects of pension reforms: Who are the winners and losers?
2022 May: Paris School of Economics (Paris, France)
2022 June: European Population Conference 2022 (Groningen, Netherlands - online)
2023 May: University of Göttingen (Göttingen, Germany)
2023 September: Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) (Salzburg, Austria)
2023 November: 8^th Viennese Vintage Workshop (Laxenburg , Austria)
2023 December: Wittgenstein Centre Conference 2023 "Exploring Population Heterogeneities" (Vienna, Austria - poster)
2024 March: Convention A(ctuaries) Europe (annual online conference)

Wealth for health/A life-cycle model of risk-taking on the job
2022 June: NBER Workshop on Ageing and Health (Munich, Germany)
2022 September: Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) 2022 (Vienna, Austria)
2023 September: Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) 2023 (Salzburg, Austria)
2024 June: RIWAG Workshop (Vienna, Austria)

Socio-economic consequences of increased longevity in contemporary populations
2023 February: The 14th Global Meeting of the NTA Network (Paris, France)

Explaining the increasing inequality in life expectancy across income groups ^*)
2023 December: Wittgenstein Centre Conference 2023 "Exploring Population Heterogeneities" (Vienna, Austria)
2024 June: RIWAG Workshop (Vienna, Austria)
2024 June: European Population Conference 2024 (Edinburgh, Scotland, UK)
2024 July: EuHEA (European Health Economics Association) Conference (Vienna, Austria)
2024 August: Talk@MPIDR, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Rostock, Germany)
2024 September: Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) 2024 (Vienna, Austria)
2024 October: Dondena Seminar (Bocconi University, Milan, Italy)

^*) Formerly: The impact of medical progress on the increasing inequality in life expectancy

Title: Reducing Inequality Within and Across Generations
Acronym: RIWAG
Funding Body: OeNB Anniversary Fund
Project No: 18744
Project Leader: Miguel Sanchez Romero
Time Frame:  March 2022 - August 2024

This project receives funding from the OeNB Anniversary Fund.