This open access book addresses the important and neglected question of older workers who are excluded from the labour market. It challenges post-capitalist discourses of active ageing with a focus on restrictive end-of-career and retirement measures. The book demonstrates how a paradigm shift is generating real processes of exclusion for important sectors of the population. By providing strong empirical evidence from different contexts, the impact of different life course trajectories on ...

This book traces the history of the baby-boomers, beginning with an explanation of the cause of the post-war baby boom and ending with the contemporary concerns of ageing boomers. It shows how the baby-boomers challenged traditional family attitudes and adopted new lifestyles in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on 90 interviews conducted with baby boomers living in London and Paris, the book demonstrates how their aspirations for leisure and consumption converged with family responsibilities a...

Legacies of Crime explores the lives of seriously delinquent girls and boys in the United States who were followed over a twenty-year period as they grew to adulthood. In-depth interviews with these women and men and their children - a majority now adolescents themselves - depict the adults' economic and social disadvantages and continued criminal involvement, and in turn the unique vulnerabilities of their children. Giordano identifies family dynamics that foster the intergenerational tra...

This volume examines ten economically advanced countries in Europe and Asia that have experienced different levels of fertility decline. It offers readers a cross-country perspective on the causes and consequences of low birth rates and the different policy responses to this worrying trend.The countries examined are not only diverse geographically, historically, and culturally, but also have different policies and institutions in place. They include six very-low-fertility countries...

This book provides insightful sociological analyses of Japanese demography and families, paying attention not only to national average data, but also to regional variations and community level analyses. In analyzing Japanese family issues such as demographic changes, courtship and marriage, international marriage, divorce, late-life divorce, and the elderly living alone, this book emphasizes the significance of two theoretical frameworks: the dual structure and regional variations of the c...

This comparative study of European time transfers reveals the full extent of transfers in the form of unpaid work and highlights the existence of important gender differences in household time production. A large quantity of goods and services are produced by household members for their own consumption, without involving market transactions. Despite the economic and social importance of unpaid work, these productive activities are largely invisible to traditional national economic accounts...

This book provides a detailed, up-to-date snapshot of Australian family formation, answering such questions as ‘what do our families look like?’ and ‘how have they come to be this way?’ The book applies sociological insights to a broad range of demographic trends, painting a comprehensive picture of the changing ways in which Australians are creating families.The first contemporary volume on the subject, Family Formation in 21st Century Australia chronicles significant changes in p...

Africans in America come from different regions of the continent; they speak different languages and are from different faith traditions. Nigerian Immigrants in the United States: Race, Identity, and Acculturation attempts to generate an interest in the study of African immigrants by looking at issues of settlement and adjustment of Nigerians in the United States. The literature is scanty about this group of immigrants and little is known about their motivations for moving to the United St...

The overarching objective of this book is to summarize, extend, and update previous research on educational differences in family behavior in Japan. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject and the first to evaluate family differentials in Japan in the context of ideas articulated in research on “diverging destinies” and “patterns of disadvantage” as part of the second demographic transition. Much of the previous work in this area has been conducted by the authors (Raymo an...

Problems associated with work-family conflict do not belong to individual families alone, but have a major social and economic impact on the greater community. This scenario also holds true across sub-Saharan Africa, as nations enter the global economy and rising numbers of women enter the workforce.One of the first resources to focus on this region, Work-Family Interface in Sub-Saharan Africa probes rarely-studied dimensions of conflict between paid employment and family ...

This book explains in fascinating detail how economic and social transformations in pre-1600 Japan led to an industrious revolution in the early modern period and how the fruits of the Industrious Revolution are what have supported Japan since the eighteenth century, improving living standards and leading to the formation of the work ethic of modern Japan.The arrival of the Sengoku Period in the sixteenth century saw the emergence and domination of government by the warrior class. ...

This is the book to focus on a new phenomenon emerging in the twenty-first century: the rapidly aging and decreasing population of a well-developed country, namely, Japan. The meaning of this phenomenon has been successfully clarified as the possible historical consequence of the demographic transition from high birth and death rates to low ones. Japan has entered the post-demographic transitional phase and will be the fastest-shrinking society in the world, leading other Asian countries t...