Abstract: 
It may seem strange to talk about poverty in Switzerland, one of the richest countries in the world. Yet in 1979, half of Swiss residents aged over 65 had a monthly income below the poverty line. And even today, around 20% of them face such a situation, which has a direct or indirect impact on their well-being. In this paper, which is part of the research tradition of the political economy of ageing and of a wider project on vulnerabilities, we study the construction of the life course of inequalities in old age, mainly using a data collection tool: retrospective life calendars.

After a brief discussion of the reliability of this source, analyses combining event history and sequence analyses illustrate the institutionalization of life courses and its role in both the reduction of poverty and its persistence. The results call into question one of the most influential theories of recent decades in the social sciences, the theory of cumulative (dis)advantages. However, the processes differ between childhood, adulthood and old age.

Gender differences are rooted in discrimination in access to education, the ability to take advantage of opportunities and to manage social norms, social norms that have a lasting impact on the social protection system. Definitely, old-age poverty is the result of people’s life course in “a specific time and place” (Elder). The relationship between economic poverty and subjective well-being is not as simple as it seems, and the various measures of what poverty might be are revealing in this respect, as is the historical transition from a social to an individual point of view. On our life calendars, participants were asked to highlight the years in their past lives when they felt most vulnerable and the years when they felt happiest. Sequence analysis is applied to this individual life assessment. Five groups emerge: Neutral (very Swiss…), Constant happiness, Happy adult life, End of happy adult life, Peak happiness. This original approach is compared with a traditional tool, the “life satisfaction scale”, and logistic regressions are used to identify the characteristics of individuals within each of the five clusters.
I will conclude by mentioning a few prospects for future research.

Presencial: Sala Àngels Torrents, CED

Virtual: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7905645674
Codi: 1984