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Cover of: Overlapping Generations Models and Graded Age-Set Societies
Linda Welling, Merwan H. Engineer

Overlapping Generations Models and Graded Age-Set Societies

Section: Articles
Volume 160 (2004) / Issue 3, pp. 454-476 (23)
Published 09.07.2018
DOI 10.1628/0932456041960623
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  • 10.1628/0932456041960623
Summary
From Africa through North America to Asia, anthropologists have found societies with formalized age-group systems. In these societies, social and economic relations between individuals are regulated by well-established rules governing transitions through the lifecycle. In this paper we detail the relationship between the classic formulations in STEWART's [1977] Fundamentals of Age-Group Systems and the overlapping generations (OLG) model. We establish that OLG models can accurately represent a large subset of actual age-group societies called graded age-set societies. Thus, an OLG model bears a close resemblance to reality.