Independence and Economic Security in Old Age

David Robinson is an associate professor of economics and dean of the
Faculty of Social Sciences at Laurentian University.

This book is likely to become a standard reference for the study of old
age in Canada. It is the result of an interdisciplinary research program
begun at McMaster University in 1995 and supported by Health Canada.
Coverage is not comprehensive, but the book does cover considerable
territory. The writing is uniformly clear. Chapters are well structured,
with extensive and useful lists of references and many well-organized
and well-described tables.

The 15 chapters are organized in four sections. The first chapter in
Part 1 provides a new and useful approach to identifying the beginning
of old age based on quantifying commonsense notions. The second chapter
provides data on the structure of the Canadian population, past and
projected. The five chapters in Part 2 focus on health and economic
independence. One essay in this section examines the meaning of
independence and another describes the unpaid economic contributions of
seniors. Part 3 includes an innovative examination of changing wage
structures and savings over time, as well as an assessment of the
usefulness of the CPI as an index of inflation for seniors. Part 4 deals
with pensions and the tax-transfer system. Two chapters deal
specifically with the situation of women.

Independence and Economic Security in Old Age is a book for specialists
and policymakers who do their homework. Nonspecialists will find it
worth their time but sometimes hard work. They are likely to skip much
of the careful discussion of econometric techniques.