The extending working lives agenda and inequalities

Authors: Liam Foster, Rachel Crossdale and Alan Walker, all University of Sheffield, UK 

Is the current workforce sustainable? 

Since the mid-1990s policy around older workers has changed radically. Many countries have explored ways to increase older worker participation in response to the demographic challenges of increasing longevity and shrinkage in the supply of younger workers. These have focused mainly on the future economic productivity and sustainability of financing older age. This narrative of extending working lives (EWL) has been accompanied by a greater awareness that the exclusion of older people from paid employment can result in shortages in the supply of experienced labour, and failure to utilise its full potential (1-2). The EWLs agenda has contributed to an increase in employment among older people in all EU countries, for example among those aged 65 and over from 16.2% to 21.3% between 2023 and 2024 (3).  

Policies to encourage working longer 

The EWLs agenda has led to a raft of pro-work policies. Policy developments have included a mixture of permissive measures including anti-age discrimination legislation and the ending of mandatory retirement ages (4). These have been accompanied by welfare-based attempts to reduce the number of working age people accessing state benefits, and pension measures, such as increasing the age of eligibility (5). EWLs policies which increase the age at which people retire and the age of pension receipt are attractive to policy makers as they increase revenues by expanding the working population, while also decreasing spending by reducing the number of beneficiaries (6). 

Do people really have the choice not to work longer? 

EWLs policies have been presented as enabling people’s ‘opportunities’, ‘choices’ and ‘freedoms’ (7). The value of employment has been linked to various aspects of individuals’ lives, including their financial status, mental and physical health and social participation (8). These developments are linked to the promotion of individual responsibility, with older workers having a duty to avoid becoming ‘burdensome’ for wider society (9). For those unable to prolong their working lives this rhetoric is particularly problematic, representing a key form of social exclusion. 

Extending working lives and inequalities 

The success of EWLs relies on the assumption that paid employment is readily available to older workers, yet this is not always the case. It also assumes older people’s capacity to take on paid work. However, the reasons why individuals leave or remain in paid employment are numerous and complex (10). These include financial status and the affordability of retirement, health, caring commitments, decisions of partners and/or close family members, job satisfaction, employers’ attitudes towards older workers and job prospects. 

Research, including the focus of our recent book, Late Working Life in Four European Countries - A Policy Perspective, has shown how EWLs measures can reinforce existing inequalities in paid employment (11). These include those experienced by women, low-skilled workers, lower educated, those with long-term ill-health and the disabled, as well as those with racially minoritised backgrounds and many migrants. These groups are more likely to experience precarious employment and exit the labour market early. For instance, women are more likely to have shorter and more fragmented working life trajectories, and to have higher rates of part-time work than their male counterparts. These have implications for employment later in working life too (12).  

A more inclusive approach to EWLs 

Overall, policymaking in relation to EWLs often lacks a strategic approach which recognises that older workers have varying circumstances linked to differential experiences throughout their life course (13). Many policies have tended to prioritise blunt policy instruments, including increases to the statutory pension age, and reductions in early retirement options and benefits, rather than more comprehensive life course approaches. These can include measures to enhance education and training, health prevention, and employment opportunities at all stages of the life course (14-15). When government policies are applied in a blanket way, and only targeted at employment in later life, there is always a risk that inequalities in opportunities to EWLs will be exacerbated, or new inequalities created.  

We conclude with a call for a more comprehensive and nuanced approach to understanding EWLs and associated policymaking, to avoid perpetuating and exacerbating the inequalities which pervade the earlier stages of working life.  

Read the full research from the book chapter here.

Author Bios: Liam Foster (pictured right) is a Professor in Social Policy and a Co-Director of the Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities (CIRCLE) at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Rachel Crossdale is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Alan Walker is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology and a Co-director of the Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield, UK.

References

1.     Walker, A. (1997). Combating age barriers in employment – A European research report. Office for the Official Publications of the European Communities.
2. Öylü, G. (2023). Inequalities and age-related disadvantages in late working life and labour market exit in Sweden (Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences Number 868). Linköping University.  
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