Age-related Differences in Work Outcomes: Developing a Better Understanding of Variations in Return-to-work, Wage-replacement and Retirement Outcomes using Better Methods and Data

Background: Age-related differences in work outcomes, such as return-to-work after work injury (RTW) and early labour market exit, are of renewed interest because they can impact organizational planning and worker well-being. Yet, age-related variations in work outcomes have yet to be fully understood. While existing data sources often do not contain items specifically intended to measure other age dimensions (e.g., functional, psychosocial, organizational, life-stage), they can contain items that could be used to assess these dimensions. If age dimensions could be assessed using existing data sources, which also contain relevant work outcomes, this can provide a feasible and efficient approach to examine the relationships between chronological age, age dimensions and outcomes of interest in existing large samples. Objectives: 1) Better understand the overall association between chronological age and wage-replacement duration, RTW and retirement expectations; 2) demonstrate a methodological approach that could be used to create indices of age dimensions using existing data sources; 3) examine the extent to which each age dimension explains the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes. Methods: This research used a combination of survey and administrative data collected from samples of working-age individuals across Canada and Australia. Regression and path models examined the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes, and the proportion mediated via age dimensions. Results: Older versus younger age was associated with greater wage-replacement duration, non-RTW and earlier retirement expectations. Differences in wage-replacement duration and non-RTW also varied as a function of follow-up time. Path models found that 25-30% of the overall relationship between older chronological age and work outcomes was mediated through functional age, life-stage age and RTW status at earlier time points (for non-RTW) and through life-stage and organizational age (for earlier retirement expectations). Conclusions: Findings indicate that both individual and contextual factors play a role in explaining relationships between older age and work outcomes. We derived novel measures of age dimensions using a variety of existing data sources and demonstrated the utility of an analytic approach to examine the relative contribution of age-related factors. This approach can be employed in future studies, although conceptual and measurement work needs to be refined.Ph.D