Declining labor force participation of older men throughout the 20th century and recent increases in participation have generated substantial interest in understanding the effect of public pensions on retirement. The National Bureau of Economic Research's International Social Security (ISS) Project, a long-term collaboration among researchers in a dozen developed countries, has explored this and related questions. The project employs a harmonized approach to conduct within-country analyses that are combined for meaningful cross-country comparisons. The key lesson is that the choices of policy makers affect the incentive to work at older ages and these incentives have important effects on retirement behavior.

The UK government has called for employers to make work adaptations in response to changes in health individuals may experience as they age. However, government assumptions place too much emphasis on the voluntary actions of employers and managers, without placing the management of health in a wider context. Drawing on insights from Thompson’s disconnected capitalism thesis, we explore whether financial/competitive pressures facing many private and public sector organisations today, alongside other factors, contribute to organisations not considering or implementing work adaptations. In this context, it is suggested that older workers may also hide health issues because of anxiety, or ‘ontological precarity’, regarding working longer. Qualitative case studies compare the delivery of work adaptations in three organisations: ‘Local Government’, ‘Hospitality’, and ‘Trains’. Work adaptations were only widely available in Trains; this was for a range of reasons, including the fact that Trains was relatively insulated from financial pressures and able to deliver job and financial security for older workers. As many older workers will continue to be employed by organisations similar to Local Government and Hospitality, we argue that policy makers cannot rely solely on employers to make adaptations.

This paper uses the Current Population Survey to study older workers' transitions out of employment and into retirement during the first year of the pandemic. We find that, among workers ages 55 to 79, the likelihood of leaving employment over the course of a year rose by 6.7 percentage points, a 43-percent increase over baseline. Workers without a college degree, Asian–Americans, those whose jobs were not amenable to social distancing, and part-time workers saw disproportionate impacts. In contrast, the likelihood of retiring increased by 1 percentage point, and there was no immediate retirement boom for full-time workers under 70.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid the present reconfiguring of corporate purpose, there is an opportunity to realign actions focused on prolonging working lives. We put forward a transformative agenda concerned with workforce ageing that aligns with contemporary expectations regarding sustainability, inequality, and emerging conceptualisations of management. In this article, the new concept of Common Good human resource management (HRM) is utilised as a potential means of encouraging business responses focused on grand challenges such as population ageing. We suggest how these principles might be applied to the issue of managing age in workplaces, to recast debate about issues of age and work, to be used as an advocacy tool encouraging employer engagement, while providing a framework that might direct organisational leadership.

This article increases understanding of university labour processes. The antecedents and characteristics of early retirement schemes implemented by Australian universities between 2010 and 2020 were considered. Twenty-eight schemes were identified across 20 universities. Content analysis of descriptions of the schemes contained in official documents was undertaken. This revealed somewhat common justifications for the schemes, linked to concerns about organisational sustainability/resilience in the face of external threats and the implementation of modernising efforts. Such justifications appeared to be underpinned by similar ageist biases on the part of management. Despite this broad commonality, however, the schemes manifested a multifurcation of possible work-retirement pathways across institutions. Such reorganisation of labour processes, based on ageist representations that potentially place established workers in conflict with others, represents an incongruence between the market-oriented objectives of universities and areas of public policy responding to workforce ageing. It is argued that drawing momentum from emerging conceptions of sustainability and current diversity initiatives such as Athena Swan and Age Friendly Universities it may be possible to sever the link university leadership perceive between the divestment of older workers and the fulfilment of modernising agendas.

More people are working into older age, raising questions about how many hours they can work before their health becomes compromised. This paper models work-hour tipping points for mental health and vitality among older Australian workers aged 50–70 years. We use longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, 2005–2016 (about 44,900 observations), and bootstrapping Three Stage Least Squares (3SLS) estimation techniques to adjust for reverse and reciprocal relationships between wages, work hours and health. Our approach corrects for heteroscedasticity in the system equation error terms, and we estimate models on the relatively healthy older adults who have remained employed into older age. Among these older workers we observe weekly thresholds of 39–40 hours beyond which mental health and vitality decline. This average, however, hides variability in work-hour limits linked to overall health and occupation. Thus, weekly tipping points for blue- and pink-collar jobs are 7–9 hours lower compared to white-collar jobs, and even wider gaps (11 hours) are apparent for workers with poorer physical functioning, which becomes common as people age. Our modelling reveals that age is not the biggest limiting factor for how many hours older adults can work, rather their health and the types of jobs are critical, and likely widen the gap in who ages successfully or not.

Negative stereotypes about older workers can result in different types of age discrimination. The aim of this study was to run a transcultural adaptation and validation of the Nordic Age Discrimination Scale (NADS) into Spanish. Three independent samples of Chilean (N = 301), Colombian (N = 150), and Spanish (N = 209) workers over the age of 45, from different sectors and professional categories, answered a questionnaire including the NADS scale, measures of perceptions of inequality, workplace harassment and several scales related to outcome variables to test criterion and construct validity. The reliability index for the NADS was .85, a similar value for both Cronbach’s alpha (α) and McDonald’s omega (ω). CFA by country suggest good fit of this single-dimension structure in a final version of 5 items, and it presents scalar invariance; using the modification indices, partial invariance is achieved at the level of the variance of the errors. Both criterion and construct validity were verified, with strong evidence for criterion validity, and moderate results for construct validity. Therefore, the Spanish version of NADS had a single-dimension structure and adequate psychometric properties being a useful tool in measuring perceptions of age discrimination in different countries.

There is scant research examining both the psychological (individual) and leadership (environmental) influences on older workers. We firstly examine the influence of older workers' mindfulness on their job engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Secondly, we address effective leadership approaches for older workers, comparing two positive relational leadership styles, leader member exchange and leader autonomy support (LAS). We survey 1,237 participants from 28 organisations in New Zealand and employ structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses using AMOS 24.0. We find that mindful older workers enjoy greater wellbeing and are discerning of the leadership styles that most benefit their engagement, satisfaction and intentions to stay within the organisation. We find that mindfulness has direct importance and LAS has indirect importance on advancing the wellbeing of older workers. Mindful older workers exhibit greater work wellbeing than non-mindful workers, but they also demonstrate greater expectations and discernment of the leadership styles they encounter.

It has often been stated by older people's advocates that discrimination affecting older people is commonplace and ongoing in the Australian labour market. In this article, we contrast such rhetoric with a review of evidence from recent large-scale surveys which demonstrates that low and declining numbers of Australians experience age discrimination, while highlighting the complexity of the phenomenon. We identify the emergence of a fake ‘age’ advocacy that is acting to the detriment of an informed public discourse concerning issues of older workers’ employment. To counter this we propose five underlying principles for advocacy on ageing and work: countering myths concerning the extent and nature of age barriers in the labour market; avoiding and challenging the use of age stereotypes in making the business case for older workers’ employment; recognition that age interacts in complex ways with a range of other factors in determining people's experiences of the labour market; challenging public understanding that is grounded in the notion that generational conflict is inevitable; and discarding traditional notions of the lifecourse in order to overcome disjunctions and contradictions that hamper efforts to encourage and support longer working lives.

In most rapidly ageing industrialised countries, ageing problems have become an important social issue. In Japan, owing to the rapidly ageing population, the government has been intervening in both the demand side and supply side of labour to increase employment of older adults. This study examines labour supply responses to the increasing pension eligibility age and labour demand responses to company expansion and the abolition of the employee selection mechanism. This study is based on Japanese longitudinal survey data (Keio Household Panel Survey) from 2008 to 2018. Since employment law revisions and social security revisions are inextricably linked, one way to examine the effect of revisions to both simultaneously is to investigate them by cohort. The difference-in-difference model was used to compare revision-affected cohorts born between April 1953 and January 1956 and unaffected cohorts born between April 1949 and March 1953. It was found that the revisions had almost no impact on the employment of older adults and their receipt of pensions. However, they did have significant positive effects on job transfers and resignations. Hence, although the system was modified, it also gave companies the option of placing older adults in associated companies and of retaining some routes for older adults to retire, much as before the revisions.

The debate about extending working lives in response to population ageing often overlooks the lack of employment opportunity for older adults with disabilities. Without work, their living standards depend heavily on government transfers. This study contributes to the literature on health inequalities by analysing the sources of income and poverty outcomes for people aged 50 to 64 in two liberal democratic countries yet with contrasting disability benefit contexts – Canada and the United Kingdom. This choice of countries offers the opportunity to assess whether the design of benefit systems has led the most disadvantaged groups to fare differently between countries. Overall, disabled older persons without work faced a markedly higher risk of poverty in Canada than in the UK. Public transfers played a much greater role in the UK, accounting for two-thirds of household income among low-educated groups, compared with one-third in Canada. The average benefit amount received was similar in both countries, but the coverage of disabled people was much lower in Canada than in the UK, leading to a high poverty risk among disabled people out of work. Our findings highlight the importance of income support systems in preventing the widening of the poverty-disability gap at older ages.

Images of what retirement is and ought to be are changing. Older workers are being encouraged to work for longer, at the same time, older adults increasingly voice expectations of a ‘third age’ of active engagement and new life prospects. In this article, we draw on the literature on older workers’ work patterns and retirement transitions (noting push/pull/stay/stuck/jump factors), and on scholarship on the changing social meaning of old age, most importantly the notions of a ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ age. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 28 employees in the private sector in Norway, aged between 55 and 66 years. Based on the interviews, we propose three ideal-typical approaches to the work–retirement transition: ‘the logic of deadline’, ‘the logic of negotiation’ and ‘the logic of averting retirement’. The ideal-types are defined by the degree to which informants assume agency in the workplace, their orientation towards work versus retirement and the degree to which they expect to exercise agency in retirement. We emphasise how retirement decisions are informed by notions of the meaning of ageing, while also embedded in relationships with employers and partners.

There is a need for improved knowledge about how workplace conditions and organisational factors may obstruct or facilitate work in late life. By means of both quantitative and qualitative data, this study aims to explore retirement preferences among employees (aged 55 and older) in a large Swedish health-care organisation and to identify work-related motives influencing their retirement preferences. The quantitative analysis showed large variation in retirement preferences in the organisation. The qualitative results were summarised into two overarching types of motives for late and early retirement preferences, general and group-specific. The general motives were shared by the early and late preference groups, and included recognition, flexibility, health and work motivation. The group-specific motives were exclusively related to either an early or a late retirement preference. Criticism towards the organisation and strenuous working conditions were specific motives for an early retirement preference, while positive accounts of work and a wish to utilise one's own competencies as well as being financially dependent on work was stated as specific motives for wanting to retire late. The results illustrate the need to improve organisational practices and routines, as well as working conditions, in order to make an extended working life accessible for more than already-privileged groups of employees.

Occupational change encompasses change of profession, employer and work tasks. This study gives an overview on occupational change in later working life and provides empirical evidence on voluntary, involuntary and desired occupational changes in the older workforce in Germany. The analyses were based on longitudinal data from 2,835 participants of the German lidA Cohort Study, a representative study of employees born in 1959 or 1965. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were performed in order to characterise the change groups in their previous job situation. The findings indicate that occupational change among older workers is frequent. In four years, 13.4 per cent changed employer, 10.5 per cent profession and 45.1 per cent work tasks. In addition, the desire for change often remains unfulfilled: the share of older workers who wanted to but did not change was 17.6 per cent for profession, 13.2 per cent for employer and 8.9 per cent for work tasks. The change groups investigated differ in terms of their socio-demographic background, health and job factors such as seniority and leadership quality. In times of ageing populations, the potential of occupational change among older workers requires more consideration in society, policy and research. Special attention should also be paid to the group of workers who would have liked to change but feel that they cannot leave.

We estimate how raising the statutory retirement age affects employment by considering the pension age reform in Estonia, that gradually raised the normal retirement age (NRA) for women from 58 to 61.5 and the early retirement age (ERA) from 56 to 59.5 during the period of 2001–2011. The analysis employs a difference-in-differences estimation strategy on register data covering women born between 1943 and 1952. The reform did have an impact on the employment rate of affected women, with an estimated increase of 4.1 percentage points associated with the rise in the NRA, and 3.4 percentage points with the rise in the ERA. These estimates are at the lower end of those found in previous studies for other countries, pointing to the role of contextual features such as lower replacement rates and fewer disincentives to work while drawing pensions.

Working consistently through one's early 60s is key to retirement security. However, workers without access to retirement plans and health insurance will likely struggle to achieve such security. This paper uses the Health and Retirement Study to identify nontraditional jobs – which lack these benefits – and applies sequence analysis to explore how workers aged 50–62 use them. The results suggest that most nontraditional jobs are used by workers consistently, and that fewer workers use these jobs briefly or as a bridge to retirement. Workers consistently in nontraditional jobs end up with less retirement income and are more likely to be depressed.

The share of workers who are self-employed rises markedly with age. Given policy concerns about inadequate retirement savings, especially among those with lower education, and the resulting interest in encouraging employment at older ages, it is important to understand the role that self-employment arrangements play in facilitating work among seniors. New data from a survey module fielded on a Gallup telephone survey distinguish independent contractor work from other self-employment and provide information on informal and online platform work. The Gallup data show that, especially after accounting for individuals who are miscoded as employees, self-employment is even more prevalent at older ages than suggested by existing data. Work as an independent contractor is the most common type of self-employment. Roughly one-quarter of independent contractors aged 50 and older work for a former employer. At older ages, self-employment generally – and work as an independent contractor specifically – is more common among the highly educated, accounting for much of the difference in employment rates across education groups. We provide suggestive evidence that differences in opportunities for independent contractor work play an important role in the lower employment rates of less-educated older adults.

Institutional contexts shape learning participation throughout the course of life. Combining micro-data on adult education from 26 European countries with country-level indicators on retirement systems in multi-level logistic regression models, the focus is on analysis of participation in non-formal learning among people aged 50–64 and its interactions with retirement policies. The analysis makes use of the largest sample of European countries used so far for exploring the issue. For the first time, gender differences in retirement policies are considered. The results imply that for all women and highly educated men, participation in non-formal training is higher when retirement age in the country is set at 65 years or higher. However, men with less education do not profit from a higher retirement age because their training participation remains unaffected by retirement policies. In the current analysis, training participation in older age groups remains unaffected by the generosity of pensions. The results outline gender differences in learning participation in older age groups. Also, after the age of 50, men with a low education are at particular risk of labour market exclusion and unemployment because the retirement age in European countries keeps rising and technological advancements make additional demands on workers’ skills.