Comment on V. K. Oppenheimer’s “The Life-Cycle Squeeze

Valerie Oppenheimer in the LifeCycle Squeeze: The Interaction of Men's Occupational and Family Life Cycles (Demography, vol. 11, May 1974, pp. 227-245) fails to grasp adequately the idea of life-cycle patterns in occupational (p. 233). Substitution of cross-section earnings by age (i.e., age differentials at one moment of tim.e) is a misleading substitute for longitudinal measurements. In reality, median earnings for men continue to increa.se to retirement age as is seen by following age cohorts over time (Consider the follo-wing ta.ble [Table 1] for men in the U.S.). A fuller discussion of this point appears in my monograph, The Middle Years, published as a special issue of Industrial Gerontology in September 1971. The figures in Table I a-re a.pproximations if for no other reason than that the Census Bureau made changes in occupational classification between 1960 and 1970, so that the occupational groups are not 100 percent identical. Nevertheless, even if a more detailed occupational classification system were used, as Oppenheimer attempts to do, the lifetime patterns would remain unchanged: earnings increase most rapidly up the middle years (about ages 35 to 50) and then, although they increase more slowly, they nevertheless continue to grow. On the avera.ge each man, as he becomes

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