New Article in “International Handbooks of Population” | 27.05.2020Combining Working Life and Health Expectancies
How long people (can) work depends not only on the age at which they retire. A new article investigates the relationship between working life expectancy and health expectancy against the backdrop of longer working lives and reveals inequalities. The increase in the numbers of older people in many European countries, which has been evident for some time now, associated with low fertility levels, has consequences for social security systems. Politicians have already been responding by raising the retirement age for certain cohorts.
A central factor in the context of the resulting longer working life is health status, and therefore the consideration of both dimensions in combination is important and will even increase in significance.
Working Life Expectancy and Health
In her contribution to the new edition of the “International Handbook of Health Expectancies”, BiB scientist Dr. Elke Loichinger focuses on the connection between the course of a working life and health expectations in view of retirement. She uses the concept of working life expectancy to show the great differences and inequalities that can be observed between countries in terms of long and healthy economic participation. Regardless of the methods of analysis used, the concept can be combined with factors such as age, gender, educational level and the type of employment. For application to ageing societies, the combination with various health indicators that have proven to be relevant for active labour market participation is useful. Considering both dimensions simultaneously - economic activity and health status - helps to reveal inequalities in both dimensions, for instance in socio-economic status.
For example, when it comes to analysing the working life expectancy of people with different socio-economic status, it is important to take into account not only the differences in the way they shape their working lives, but also their varying age at entry into the labour market. The disadvantages in remaining life and health expectancy that certain groups of employees, such as craftspeople, have compared to other occupational groups are the result of their entire (working) life.
Policy Opportunities
Information on how economic activities and life years in health are distributed over the life course and around retirement, how they change over time and how they are reflected between people with different characteristics can support policy makers in their approach to ageing societies. This applies to pension policy as well as to health policy in order to ultimately have a positive influence on life expectancy in health and working life expectancy.
Loichinger, Elke; Weber, Daniela (2020): Combining Working Life and Health Expectancies. In: Jagger, Carol et al. (eds.): International Handbook of Health Expectancies (International Handbooks of Population 9). Heidelberg: Springer Nature: 249–261.