Editorial on the special issue “Ageing Populations, Reversing Early Retirement and the Economic Situation of Older People in Modern Societies”

Abstract

This special issue of Comparative Population Studies addresses the economic wellbeing and employment chances of the population aged 50 years and older. One of the major challenges facing modern societies today and in future is a severe demographic ageing. Due to low fertility rates as well as rising life expectancy older people become an increasingly important part of the population in most developed countries. From both, the scientifi c as well as the political point of view, it is important to gain a better understanding about the economic situation of the older population as well as their labour market integration. The contributions of this special issue shed light onto these topics from different, complementing perspectives. The fi rst main aspect addressed by this special issue is the employment situation of older people in Europe and partly beyond. More and more, the labour markets of modern societies have to be able to integrate older workers more successfully. For several decades, most Western societies have relied on quite the opposite, namely on systematically pushing older workers out of employment (Kohli et al. 1991; Gruber/Wise 1999, 2004; Borsch-Supan 2000; Blossfeld et al. 2006; Ebbinghaus 2006; Blossfeld et al. 2011). The expansion of early retirement schemes was used in modern economies to relieve national labour markets since the early 1970s. Yet, the growing generational imbalance and the increasing share of older people have put pension systems of modern societies under pressure. Alongside this, the shrinking proportion of young workers will sooner or later result in increasing labour shortages in modern societies making it more and more important for competitive economies to maintain older people in employment instead of sending them into early retirement. Indeed, more recently a clear pension policy change can be observed in Western societies and governments, especially in European countries, have tried to increase the labour market attachment of older employees by retrenching early retirement options (see, for example, the “EU Lisbon Agenda 2010” as well as the “Europe 2020” targets). The fi rst two contributions of this special issue by Ebbinghaus/ Hofacker and Buchholz/Rinklake/Blossfeld dedicate themselves to the question of the effects of these recent policy attempts for reversing early retirement. The article by Ebbinhaus/Hofacker adopts an internationally comparative macro perspective on this issue. The authors show that there indeed has been a reversal of early retirement in most modern societies in the past years. However, at the Comparative Population Studies – Zeitschrift fur Bevolkerungswissenschaft Vol. 38, 4 (2013): 797-800 (Date of release: 31.12.2013)