Combining Working Life and Health Expectancies

Loichinger, E. & Weber, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-0458 (2020). Combining Working Life and Health Expectancies. In: International Handbook of Health Expectancies. pp. 249-261 Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-37666-6 10.1007/978-3-030-37668-0_18.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

People around the world are living longer while fertility has been declining in the great majority of countries. Increasing the length of working lives is a commonly sought remedy to deal, at least in part, with the financial consequences for the public welfare system of longer lives. A crucial question is whether people are physically and mentally capable of working until continuously higher ages, i.e. whether the planned or already implemented increases in official retirement ages will be faced by persons of good health. Hence, it is important to not only look at the development of working lives and focus on lengthening them but, at the same time, to take a close look at developments of the health status of people around retirement ages.

An existing indicator that can be used to monitor developments of working life for people at any age is working life expectancy (WLE). The calculation and analysis of WLE has relevance in itself, but it is the combination of WLE with analyses of health indicators that are gaining prominence, particularly in the context of aging societies. Simultaneous consideration of both dimensions – economic activity and health – is useful for a range of reasons. It allows the detection of inequalities in the development of both indicators, for example for different subgroups of the population; it indicates where the limits of increasing WLE might lie, given current levels of population health; and, particularly, the analysis of trends in both indicators can point to possible issues in extending WLE further.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Working life expectancy; Health; Population aging
Research Programs:	World Population (POP)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	17 Apr 2020 11:49
Last Modified:	27 Aug 2021 17:32
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/16420

Actions (login required)

View Item