Social and Health Inequalities in Extending Working Lives

Seminar abstract

In recent years, governments around the world have been tackling the issue of extending working lives.

Given population ageing, people are living longer and therefore drawing a pension for longer, placing pressure on public pension system. The main policy response has been to increase the state pension ages so that people continue contributing to and drawing from a pension for same proportion of their lives.

However one challenge with this that increases in life expectancy have not been matched by increases in healthy life expectancy, limiting the ability to work into older age.

Further, there are substantial socioeconomic inequalities in healthy life expectancy, suggesting that some people an expect little to no time enjoying a healthy retirement. These inequalities are strongly related to (gendered) employment over the life course.

In this talk, Dr Daniel Holman will present work which mainly explores inequalities in extending working lives with respect to;

1. socioeconomic position (SEP) and;
2. gender

drawing mainly on a two and a half year European research project which involved five partner countries (Extend - Social inequalities in extending working lives of an ageing workforce).

This presentation will show that lower SEP workers are especially likely to leave the labour market due to health problems, and this is partly explained by working conditions such as physical demands, work variation and control.

Socioeconomic inequalities are particularly pronounced in England compared with other European countries. 

Gender is a further key axis of inequality in employment and health, which is shown by drawing on work from a European COST Action network and analysis of the gendered effects of chronic conditions on employment exit.

Lastly, this talk will explore the intersection of SEP and gender with respect to the headline policy on extending working lives - raising state pension ages - which suggests a way in which lower SEP women have been particularly affected by the reforms in the UK context.

Booking

This seminar is free to attend and there is no need to box in advance. Please feel free to bring your friends, colleagues and classmates along.

Speaker bio

Dr Daniel Holman is an interdisciplinary researcher in the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield, where he co-leads the Well-being and Health Across the Life Course research theme. 

He was also co-investigator for the ESRC funded project, Social inequalities in extending working lives of an ageing workforce. He is currently Principle Investigator for the ESRC funded project Chronic disease and healthy ageing at the intersections: social locations, biomarkers, and health practices. 

He is a Research Fellow from the University's new flagship Healthy Lifespan research institute.