Social Health Inequalities in Extending Working Lives

Seminar abstract

In recent years, extending working lives has become a major policy challenge for governments around the world.

Given population ageing, people are living longer and therefore drawing a pension for longer, placing pressure on public pension systems.

The main policy response has been to increase state pension ages so that people continue contributing to and drawing from a pension for the same proportion of their lives.

However one challenge with this is 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, meaning that some people can expect little to no time enjoying a healthy retirement.

In this talk, Dr Dan Holman will present work which explores inequalities in extending working lives with respect to socioeconomic position (SEP) and gender, drawing on a 2.5-year European research project which involved five partner countries (EXTEND - Social inequalities in extending working lives of an ageing workforce).

The findings suggested 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 extending working lives given the gender difference in earnings, pensions, informal care and health differences in later life.

Gender and socioeconomic inequalities intersect, leaving some groups of women particularly disadvantaged.

In concluding, Dr Holman will suggest ways in which extending working live policies may be more equitable, drawing on best practice examples in other European countries.

Booking

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We warmly encourage you to join in with your friends, colleagues and classmates.

Join this seminar online on Wednesday 17 March 2021 at 12pm

Speaker bio

Dan 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 UK Co-Investigator for the ESRC funded project EXTEND - Social inequalities in extending working lives of an ageing workforce, and is currently Principal 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 for the University’s new flagship Healthy Lifespan Institute.