Abstract

Europe’s population is ageing. Statutory retirement ages are commonly raised to account for continuous increases in life expectancy. In order to estimate the potential to increase statutory and consequently effective retirement ages further, in this study, we investigate the relationship between partial working life expectancy (WLE) and three health expectancies that represent health aspects important for work ability and employability between ages 50 and 59 as well as 60 and 69 for women and men in Europe. We also explore the association between these four indicators and the highest level of educational attainment. We apply Sullivan’s method to estimate WLE and three selected measures that capture general, physical, and cognitive health status of older adults for 26 European countries since 2004. Over time, WLEs increased significantly in the younger age group for women and in the older age group for both sexes. The expected number of years in good physical health have continuously been higher than any of the other three indicators, while the expected number of years in good cognitive health have shown a noticeable increase over time. The investigation of the relationship between education and each life expectancy confirms the well-established positive correlation between education and economic activity as well as good health. Our results indicate potential to extend working lives beyond current levels. However, significant differences in the expected number of years in good health between persons with different levels of education require policies that account for this heterogeneity.

Highlights

  • Life expectancies at birth as well as at adult ages have been increasing in Europe for decades

  • Our analysis builds on previous analyses where we presented developments of working life expectancy (WLE) over time by sex across Europe and presented comparisons of WLE and healthy life expectancy (HLE) at age 50 and WLE by education at age 50 for the year 2009 (Loichinger and Weber 2016)

  • In order to address the question to what degree WLE is associated with health-specific life expectancies, we first compare the four indicators in 2017 for 26 European countries

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Summary

Introduction

Life expectancies at birth as well as at adult ages have been increasing in Europe for decades. This trend in combination with the in many countries persistently low levels of fertility entails a shift in populations’ age compositions towards older age groups. This development is prone to endanger financial sustainability in several areas of social security systems, one of them being pension systems, as many European countries provide public pensions on a pay-as-you-go basis. Put differently: what is the health status of persons at retirement ages and how does it compare to present lengths of working lives?

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