Working Conditions in Mid‐life and Participation in Voluntary Work After Labour Market Exit

Abstract

AbstractPromoting participation in productive activities after labour market exit is an important challenge for European policies. Not only society as a whole might profit from an increased investment, but also older people themselves, since participation in a productive activity, such as voluntary work, was shown to improve health and well-being in older ages (Bath and Deeg 2005) – a finding that was also found in the two first waves of SHARE (Siegrist and Wahrendorf 2009a). These results suggest that being engaged in a productive activity after labour market exit helps to cope with the ageing process because valued earlier activities are replaced by new ones, providing opportunities of positive self-experience which in turn strengthens well-being and health. Previous findings, though, show that participation varies considerably according to social position and between different countries (see also Hank 2010).KeywordsLabour MarketVoluntary WorkLabour Market PolicyPsychosocial Work EnvironmentPsychosocial Working ConditionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.