Key messages

• Increasing statutory retirement ages and limiting routes to early retirement are frequent policy responses to population ageing, but this is unlikely to have the desired impact if poor health is a barrier to people working at older ages.
• Increasing the pension age, without addressing the constraints older workers face when participating in the workforce, can have serious negative health consequences for this group of people.
• Pension ages have been increased in response to improvements in life expectancy, but these improvements have not always been accompanied by reduced disability rates, as people are living longer but not necessarily in better health.
• Poor mental health is a major source of disability, so improving the mental health of working populations remains a critical policy goal if we want future populations to reach older age in good health and to continue working.
• A strategy to improve the health capacity of older workers would need to combine three different types of policy and intervention:

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  workplace-based health and wellness interventions are promising and often underutilized strategies to promote health and increase the work capacity of older workers – not only to reduce health care expenses and injuries, but also to help workers maintain engagement and increase productivity in older age

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  employer accommodation practices have an important role to play in helping older workers with health problems to stay in work

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  The social protection system might be critical to ensuring that older workers who experience functional problems do not leave the labour force, for example, by ensuring that disability insurance/benefits policies support the integration of older people into the workforce.

• Prejudices and misconceptions about the productivity of older workers result in reduced investment in the older workforce, even though they have enormous potential to contribute to the economy. Interventions can support older workers to benefit from workplace programmes and policies to maintain productivity, while at the same time promoting their physical and mental health.

Contents

• About the series
• About this brief
• Acronyms
• Acknowledgements
• Executive summary
• Introduction
  • Why do we need people to work longer?
  • Are older people in good enough health to work longer?
  • How do increases in the retirement age influence the health of older workers?
  • How can policy-makers support the health of older workers?
• Conclusions
• References

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