Prolonging working life

Aims

Due to demographic changes across Europe, there are strong political interests in maintaining the labour force by prolonging working life, i.e. increasing retirement age. TNO led a previous PEROSH project “Ageing of the workforce” which dealt with this issue, but this project has been terminated.

However, due to the strong political interests in all European countries, it is relevant for PEROSH to pursue collaborative activities in the research field ‘Prolonging working life’. The new PEROSH project will maintain and expand the existing research collaboration on this topic in PEROSH and serve as a strong platform for future collaboration in relation to future HORIZON 2020 or HORIZON Europe calls.

The present PEROSH project aims to determine push and stay factors for labour market participation of older workers across different European countries with different regulations and cultures to thereby better guide initiatives for maintaining older workers at the labour market across Europe.

Expected results

1. On the PEROSH website, an overview of projects at the PEROSH institutes about prolonging working life (short description, webpage link, target groups, type of study etc).
2. A list of questions relevant to prolonging working life that can be answered from the different existing European datasets.
3. A list of research questions that can be compared in existing national datasets from the participating PEROSH institutes, i.e. where similar types of data are available in different countries.
4. Organize a conference in 2019 and 2021.

Outcomes

• The first report with an overview of studies about prolonging working life across the PEROSH institutes is now available here.
• The second report with an overview of European datasets and opportunities to investigate relevant research questions about prolonging working life in Europe is now available. Click hereto download.
• The 1st International PEROSH Conference on Prolonging Working Life was held online the 25-26th May 2020. The program can be seen here.
• Professor Lars L. Andersen gave an online webinar about Prolonging Working Life. The 1-hour presentation is freely available here.
• The 3-day NIVA course Prolonging Working Life was held the 12-14th January 2021. The program can be seen here.
• As part of the project a “special issue” about Prolonging Working Life has been published here.