Working longer in a changing economy: will ageing populations mean ageing workforces?

It would seem logical that ageing population would result in ageing work-forces. After a period when the attention of researchers was focused on the trend towards a shortening of working life (for example Kohli et al., 1991), there has been increasing attention in policy circles on examing pathways to work and on prolonging working lives among older workers. Recently, national government policymakers have been keen to promote company best practice examples but this ignores whether some industry sectors are more inclined to countenance older workforces than other. It is this issue that concerns this chapter. It begins by briefly summarizing public policy efforts in response to economic challenges resulting from population ageing, before going on to discuss the repsonse of employers, particularly as they wrestle with an increasingly complex and dynamic operating environment. It concludes by asking questions about the future place of older workers in the labour markets of the industrialized nations, and how they experience efforts to make them work longer