Working longer

Hero Carousel

IHHD hero 1343 x 537

Working longer: paid employment beyond age 65 years

This project aims to understand health, quality of life, paid employment and informal caring in the decade after the present State Pension Age.

Background

Start Date: Jan 2013 End Date: Dec 2017 Status: Completed

A widespread policy response to the increase in life expectancy at middle age has been to extend the years of working life. The project will investigate some of the personal and family consequences of this policy. This project aims to understand the relationships between health, quality of life, paid employment and informal caring in the decade after the present State Pension Age.

Research Questions

  1. Are those in paid employment at ages 65-74 years healthier than those who retire before or at the State Pension Age?
  2. After allowing for any such health selection, is paid employment during the period 65-74 years good for a person's health?
  3. Which pattern of paid employment during 65-74 years (full-time; part-time; combined, or not, with informal caring) is associated with the highest quality of life?
  4. Is paid employment at 65-74 years associated with a lower likelihood of being an informal carer?
  5. Do these relationships vary with the type of welfare state - liberal (England & Wales); social democratic (Norway), former soviet (Czech Republic), conservative (Italy)?

Method

Health measures are mortality risk and prevalence of long-standing illness, in: LS; Norwegian linked registers; Czech component of HAPIEE; Turin Longitudinal Study. Quality of life is measured as CASP-12 or CASP-19, in: the 18 mainland Europe countries of SHARE; the French GAZEL (Gas & Electricity) Study; ELSA. The application will be made for a Leverhulme Trust international network award to enhance the international collaborative work.

Contact us

Project Lead: Professor David Blane (UCL)

Project Team: Professor Gopal Netuveli (IHHD, UEL), Dr Anne McMunn (UCL) , Dr Elizabeth Webb (UCL)

Funder: ESRC

Project Partners: UCL, UEL with collaborators: Oyvind Naess (Norway), Hynek Pikhart (Czech Republic), Giuseppe Costa (Italy), Morten Wahrendorf (SHARE), Marcel Goldberg (GAZEL).

For more information, contact:  Professor Gopal Netuveli g.netuveli@uel.ac.uk

You may also be interested in...