This paper examines whether retirement-income systems allow older individuals to enjoy socially acceptable income levels independent of paid work (decommodification) and the family (defamilialization). Little research has investigated the degree to which decommodification and defamilialization...

LIS database is used to compare various nations' earnings distributions with respect of earnings inequality during the mid 1980's. The paper also addresses whether or not earnings inequality changed in some of these countries between the beginning of the decade and the mid-1980's.

The author uses LIS data to test, on an individual level, Esping-Andersen's hypothesis that the three political strategies he conceived in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990) furnish homogenous old-age decommodification levels. He finds not only that the levels of decommodification are...