David A. Wise (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226442877
- eISBN:
- 9780226442907
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226442907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Public and Welfare
This is the seventh phase of an ongoing project on international social security which compares twelve developed countries’ experiences and uses differences in their retirement program provisions to ...
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This is the seventh phase of an ongoing project on international social security which compares twelve developed countries’ experiences and uses differences in their retirement program provisions to explore their effects on retirement and related questions. This volume explores whether older people are healthy enough to work longer using two main methods. We ask how much older individuals today could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past, or as younger individuals in similar health. Both methods suggest there is significant additional health capacity to work at older ages. A third method based on improvements in self-assessed health (SAH) over time could only be implemented in certain countries, and the results were mixed. For most countries, there was a strong education gradient in the incidence of poor health. Some countries showed health improvements as measured by SAH, though these gains may be larger for higher education quartiles. The methods suggest that older men have substantial additional capacity to work beyond current employment levels. We emphasize that our concept of the health capacity to work is not intended to suggest how long people should work nor to suggest what typical retirement ages should be in various countries. There may be impediments to working longer, such as weak labor demand, but health capacity to work can be important in considering whether increases in retirement ages might be constrained by older workers’ health. The results of this phase suggest that this is not the case.Less
This is the seventh phase of an ongoing project on international social security which compares twelve developed countries’ experiences and uses differences in their retirement program provisions to explore their effects on retirement and related questions. This volume explores whether older people are healthy enough to work longer using two main methods. We ask how much older individuals today could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past, or as younger individuals in similar health. Both methods suggest there is significant additional health capacity to work at older ages. A third method based on improvements in self-assessed health (SAH) over time could only be implemented in certain countries, and the results were mixed. For most countries, there was a strong education gradient in the incidence of poor health. Some countries showed health improvements as measured by SAH, though these gains may be larger for higher education quartiles. The methods suggest that older men have substantial additional capacity to work beyond current employment levels. We emphasize that our concept of the health capacity to work is not intended to suggest how long people should work nor to suggest what typical retirement ages should be in various countries. There may be impediments to working longer, such as weak labor demand, but health capacity to work can be important in considering whether increases in retirement ages might be constrained by older workers’ health. The results of this phase suggest that this is not the case.
Accelerating Energy Innovation
African Successes, Volume I
African Successes, Volume II
African Successes, Volume III
African Successes, Volume IV
After the Flood
Agglomeration Economics
Aging Issues in the United States and Japan
American Universities in a Global Market
