To Retire or Not to Retire: Is There an Option for Older Workers in Hong Kong?

Over the next thirty years, Hong Kong will have a rapidly ageing population. One possible consequence of this will be a labour shortage, which means that it will be essential to strike a proper balance between the amount of time spent in work and the amount spent in retirement in old age. The balance is determined by the interaction between the aspiration of workers, employers’ attitudes to older workers, as well as the productivity of the labour force. In this article, we examine the issue based on life‐course theory and we argue that the compartmentalization of education, work and retirement must be broken by changes in social policy. We identify three groups of future older adults in the coming three decades: those who may be forced to retire early in their fifties, those who plan to retire in their sixties, and those who will continue to work until they can no longer work. The current situations of these groups are described, and social policies that are related to retirement pension scheme, age discrimination, life‐long education, and flexible work arrangements are suggested to weaken the age structuring of education and employment institutions. Our ultimate objective is to create a societal environment in which older workers have a real option either to work or to retire in the coming decades.     

Effective retirement age from employment and full‐time employment,and the impact of the 2008 crisis

Estimates of effective retirement age based on labour force participation rates are commonly used for actuarial experience review and policy development. However, the transition from work to retirement and the socio‐economic environment have evolved over the years, influenced by a growing role for gradual retirement and the labour market impact of the 2008 economic crisis. Rather than focusing exclusively on retirement ages based on labour force participation rates, this article presents complementary estimates of retirement ages to better assess the effective retirement age from employment. It also introduces the concept of retirement from full‐time employment, showing that the retirement age from full‐time employment is systematically lower than the retirement age from employment. The results reveal that the trend towards an increase in the retirement age has been impacted by economic conditions when considering the effective employment of older workers. Results are presented for different Member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development over the period 2005–2015.     

Successful yet insufficient: German policies for higher employment rates among older age groups

In recent years among the OECD countries, Germany has witnessed the largest increase in the employment rates of older people. This increase, and general German employment rates, are associated with both supply side measures in the fields of pensions and unemployment policies and employment promotion policies. Yet, supply side measures and Germany's shift from conservative towards liberal policy goals and policies in the case of older workers have resulted in economic inequality. These policies could be complemented by pro‐employability measures in order to become fully effective. This article describes recent policy reforms in the main policy fields of retirement, unemployment, and employment promotion, considers their effects on employment and inequality, and offers reform suggestions to raise further older worker employment rates without increasing inequality.     

Working late: policy relevance for older workers in the United States

The United States has seen a sizable increase in older worker labour force participation, although how much of this is due to public policy is uncertain. In fact, outside of academic and policy research circles, there has been relatively little attention paid to older workers and the challenges of an aging workforce in that country. Public policymakers have not demonstrated the same interest in expanding employment opportunities for older workers that they have shown for other groups, or that has been seen in other countries. Still, a number of significant pieces of legislation have been enacted over the past several decades that should be making continued employment at later ages easier, more attractive, or more essential financially. This paper examines those policies. However, because of confounding and conflicting influences from elsewhere, public policy initiatives focusing on older worker employment do not appear to be major contributors to rising labour force participation rates at older ages.     

Employers and the Management of Retirement

In the UK early withdrawal from the labour market is seen as a risk and a cost, worsening the dependency ratio, raising public and private pension costs and threatening additional welfare expenditure over the longer term. Explanations of the retirement process have focused on the welfare state and the impact of pensions and other social security policies. This paper argues that a missing actor in these accounts is the employing organization. Early retirement in the UK has been predominantly driven by the labour requirements of employers rather than state policies to encourage older workers to take early retirement. There is a case for arguing that significant change in retirement behaviour in the UK will come primarily from the modification of employers’ policies. This research is a case study of three employers: one public‐sector and two commercial. It examines the dynamics of the retirement decision. This paper reports the public‐sector case. The findings indicate that employers, in order to reduce their pensions liabilities and stem the cost of early retirement, are trying to regain control of the retirement process. The employees interviewed felt they experienced little choice concerning their retirement, had limited knowledge of the options open to them and found pensions complicated and confusing.     

Recent public policy and Australian older workers

This article considers the characteristics and utility of pro‐work policies targeting Australian older workers that have emerged in the context of population ageing, amid concerns that this will lead to labour shortages and an increasing social welfare burden. There has been a recent surge in public policy regarding the ageing workforce, the efficacy of which has not been tested by evaluation studies. After considering the conceptual foundations and objectives of various government initiatives, it is argued that the present public policy approach may have serious flaws that are not only detrimental to the stated overall objective of prolonging working lives, but may, in fact, be harmful to older workers and fail to address the needs of business. This stems from programs reaching only a small proportion of those older people who would potentially benefit from assistance, and from misdirected effort aimed at encouraging behavioural change on the part of employers or industries. It is argued that there is a need for greater targeting of policy efforts on the actual needs of industry and for public policy itself to become more age‐aware.     

The decline of substitute pathways into retirement: Empirical evidence from the Dutch health care sector

Early retirement schemes and disability insurance in the Netherlands have undergone several reforms in recent decades. The reforms have increased incentives for older workers to continue working and have decreased the roles of “substitute pathways” into retirement. This article gives an overview of the reforms and, using administrative data for workers in the health care sector, tests a number of hypotheses about the labour market participation of older workers. The results offer two main findings: i) that the Dutch reforms have indeed been effective, as the labour force participation rate of older workers has increased; and ii) the concept of “substitute pathways” has become less relevant as the use of disability insurance has been closed off as an exit route to early retirement. Nevertheless, caution is required before generalizing the implications of these Dutch findings to other OECD countries.     

The work prospects of older employees: An international comparison

The labour markets in the European Community countries are faced with a massive change in the structural composition of employee age groups. This article examines the employment prospects for older persons in selected European countries. The first, introductory section gives a quantitative comparison of existing levels of employment of older persons. This group is defined on the basis of the Eurostat labour force statistics; it comprises those aged over 50 but under 65. The second section aims to give an overall picture of the different types of early pension and the different methods by which older employees were taken off the labour market in the past. In the 1970s and 1980s the countries of Europe took numerous measures to bring about early cessation of work and early pensions for older persons, in order to reduce the labour surplus at a time when unemployment was increasing. In future, however, employee age structures will develop on opposite lines (third section): demographic change will affect pensions policy financially (extending working life rather than pensioning workers off). The change in company employee age structures will begin in the 1990s. This new impending trend calls for longer-term adjustments in employment policies: these will be considered in the fourth, concluding section of the article.     

Thank God you're here: the coming generation and their role in future‐proofing Australia from the challenges of population ageing

Like much of the industrialised world, Australia's population is ageing, the implications of which are twofold: increasing demand for publicly funded services and a decline in the supply of prime working‐age people. In grappling with the challenges of a diminishing workforce, the Australian Government is currently relying on its migration programs to provide both the much‐needed labour and skills for the resource boom and also to stimulate the economy through population growth. However, there may be another, not yet fully considered solution to the upcoming demographic problem. This paper investigates how the grandchildren of the baby boomers, termed here the Thank God You're Here generation (Gen TGYH), might impact on Australia's predicted workforce shortage. This generation of workers will enter the labour force as the last of the baby boomers reach retirement age, and will not only be bigger in size than preceding generations (Y, X and Baby Boomers), but also potentially be better educated than the retiring generation. This paper will also canvas the opportunities for both Gen TGYH and employers as well as the challenges for policymakers and governments in maximising the opportunity provided by this generation in the Australian economy.     

Older people, work and equal opportunity

People in industrialized countries are living longer, having fewer children and retiring sooner. The proportion of older people in the population is rising; their labour force participation is declining. These trends are arousing apprehensions about future labour supply and pension financing as contributor/beneficiary ratios decrease. A widely advocated policy response is to seek higher participation rates, especially by raising pensionable ages and restricting early retirement. Little has been done to improve the labour market position of seniors. Three-pronged action is needed: promoting training, placement and workplace flexibility; changing attitudes through education and information; and prohibiting age discrimination in employment.     

Improving gender outcomes in social security retirement systems

Assessing whether retirement systems meet their varying objectives requires analysing outcomes across different categories of beneficiaries with different working, financial, demographic, and family situations. Policymakers should therefore assess systems on the distribution of outcomes rather than average outcomes. Much has been written about the gender inequalities inherent in labour markets and how these are reflected and reproduced in pension systems, and there is growing evidence that recent reforms have exacerbated these trends. Recent research has turned to the policy measures available to policymakers to forestall or reverse these trends, but this literature tends to overlook important administrative measures that have the potential to reduce inequalities in access that could improve pension outcomes for women within the current policy framework. This paper examines the main issues surrounding gender inequality in retirement outcomes; explores the implications of recent reform trends in light of the differential outcomes for women, including policy options to mitigate the negative impacts; and concludes with a review of key administrative measures, including streamlining affiliation procedures, improving information, and simplifying payment of contributions and receipt of benefits and better compliance of employers.     

Australia's retirement income revolution: a Finnish system "down-under"

Most advanced industrial societies are confronting serious economic recession, and governments are seeking ways to stimulate economic growth and reduce government expenditure. For many countries these problems are compounded by aging populations and demographic changes. There are fewer people in the workforce, and more people in older age groups live longer and have increased expectations for retirement lifestyles. The result has been that many governments are radically transforming their systems of retirement income provision, often causing political, economic and social upheaval and widespread public anxiety. Australia is one country in which there have been huge changes in the retirement income system in the past 5 years. The system has been substantially privatized, and future retirement income will come from statutorily enforced earnings-related individual savings accumulated in decentralized private funds. Australia's new retirement income regime bears extraordinary similarities to the Finnish system of employment-related pensions, yet there was no reference to the Finnish system in the evolution of the new Australian system. There are lessons for Australia and for other countries in the long and successful operation of the Finnish pension system. This article first examines Australia's retirement income system, recent government policy changes and likely implications of these retirement policy changes for the future of Australia's traditional welfare state. Cross-national comparisons of the retirement income regimes in Finland and Australia, identifying international best practice in each country, comprise the second half of the article. Such comparisons will be of interest to policy-makers seeking new policy directions.     

France: working longer takes time,in spite of reforms to raise the retirement age

Examination of the French situation from a comparative European perspective exposes the country's poor performance with regard to the employment of seniors and the prolongation of working life. Despite a recent rise in the employment rate of 55–59 year‐olds, worrisome signs have appeared, such as the steep rise in unemployment for this age category; this is indicative of the increasing vulnerability of ageing workers in the labour market. This critical analysis of twenty years of French public policies related to older workers seeks to identify the reasons for France's lag in making working life longer. The principal reason seems to be that public policies have nearly exclusively focused on increasing the supply of senior labour without adequately taking into account incentives for stimulating corporate demand for it. The many pension reforms undertaken from 2003 to 2014 have sought to lift the institutional obstacles to working longer. Accordingly, they have raised both the legal retirement age and the requisite number of quarters of contributions for entitlement to a full pension under Social Security. But effective, active labour market policies for stimulating the demand for senior labour have been lacking.     

Are baby‐boomers healthy enough to keep working? Health as a mediator of extended labour force participation

One strategy to reduce the economic impact of structural ageing is to increase and/or extend the workforce participation of older workers. Currently, a large proportion of this group consists of post‐World War II baby‐boomers (1946–1965) whose characteristics, experiences and attitudes differ markedly from their predecessors. Maintaining good health underpins strategies to extend workforce participation among baby‐boomers but there is little hard evidence supporting the assumption that baby‐boomers are generally in good health compared to previous generations and will, therefore, be able to work longer. Using a dataset that includes biomedical and self‐reported health for a representative sample of South Australian baby‐boomers, we analyse the extent to which current labour force participation is mediated by health. We find that health is a significant factor in workforce exits. Respondents with fair‐to‐poor self‐rated health, or with diabetes, arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cardiovascular disease, were more likely to be retired or unable to work, and around 10 per cent of older baby‐boomers (born 1946–1955) who have left the workforce rate their health as poor or fair. The data suggest that these patterns are likely to be replicated in younger baby‐boomers (born 1956–1965).     

Restructuring Australian retirement incomes: Implications of changing work and retirement patterns

Work and retirement patterns among older Australian women and men are changing. In this paper, the interactions between these patterns and social security policies are contrasted with the desirable direction of work and retirement later in life. The change in Australia's retirement incomes system towards the "three pillar model" described by the World Bank poses particular issues for late life employment and retirement, especially for older women.     

Australia’s national urban policy: The smart cities agenda in perspective

The Australian Government's attempts at national urban policy have been sporadic and inconsistent, under the constraints of constitutional, financial, ideological and political factors. This paper concerns the recent resurgence of national urban policy under the rubric of “smart cities” adopted by the Turnbull Government and carried on by the incumbent Morrison Government. It investigates how this round of smart cities agenda articulates with Australia's political tradition of national urban policy to seek continuity and change, through comparing historical policies, unpacking major smart cities programmes, identifying explanatory factors and critically commenting on its innovation and legacy. Drawing upon these analyses, this paper argues that understanding the smart cities agenda needs to move beyond the political, ideological “to-and-fro” pendulum to national urban policy observed in history. Rather, it resonates with a globalised policy norm established upon the city-based global integration and competition, driven by an imperative of transitioning to a knowledge economy and pursuing innovation capacity. It is too early to judge whether the smart cities agenda will bring changes to Australian cities in the way it wishes, since it involves long-term infrastructure investment and urban development projects. However, a comprehensive and consistent national urban policy to govern the Australian system of cities and towns has not been established yet.     

The effects of age structure on the labor force and retirement in China

What are the current and future trends in age structure in China as it relates to labor force and retirement? And, what is the impact of the one-child policy on these trends? A trend analysis identifies that as the parents of the one-child family age, China will have an older population, proportionately, with a smaller middle-aged population to support them in the traditional manner, unlike previous generations. A burden will be placed on the working age population as the one-child generation will have to help support two parents if single, and four parents if married, particularly in urban areas. This will also impact rural areas where formal systems of elderly support are not yet fully developed. In terms of labor resources, the elderly may be better supported in old age if they stay in the labor force for a longer period. However, younger workers need employment, while the old must work to offset the lack of formal support, and the potential decline in intergenerational family support due to the changing age-structure. The challenge facing policy-makers is to bring about a balance between employment patterns and support between generations.     

Achieving fuller working lives: labour market and policy issues in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom there has been a shift away from policies promoting early retirement towards an emphasis on extended, fuller working lives. This article examines the nature of policy change in this area and prospects for individuals remaining in work longer. Pension ages for men and women are rising rapidly and by 2028 are likely to reach 67 years. Cash benefits for those out of work before state pension age are becoming harder to access and incentives for working beyond 65 are being enhanced. In this context, restrictions have been placed on the use of mandatory retirement ages by employers. Employees have also been granted the right to request flexible employment. However, a lack of coordinated policy up until now means that important challenges exist with regard to extending working lives. Ill‐health and low levels of qualifications limit the employment prospects of many older people, particularly among those in the poorest segments. Likewise, retention rates of older workers may have improved, but prospects for recruitment in older age remain poor. Policies focusing on the individual have also not yet recognised the extent to which employment in older age is influenced by the household and wider family context.     

After Retrenchment: Labour Market Experiences of Women and Men

Job loss in manufacturing industry has been a marked feature of the Australian economy over the last decade but little is known about the prospects for re-employment of workers who have been retrenched. This paper reports the results of a survey of the subsequent labour market experiences of 271 workers made redundant when a whitegoods plant was closed in December 1982 at Bankstown in Sydney's western suburbs. The retrenched workers were contacted twice, ten to twelve months apart and a response rate of 80 per cent was achieved. The paper compares the labour market experiences of retrenched women and men. Does the lower labour force participation rate of women in the population at large apply to women who have previously shown a strong commitment to the labour force through their stable employment history? The paper discusses the factors which might affect retrenched women's response to unemployment, including institutional arrangements, a gender-based domestic division of labour and the nature of the jobs available to unskilled blue collar workers.     

The Impact of Caring on Informal Carers' Employment,Income and Earnings: a Longitudinal Approach

In Australia the policy balance has shifted away from institutional forms of health and aged care towards supporting people in their own homes. This change presupposes a significant and growing supply of informal caring labour. A large proportion of informal carers (40–60 per cent) currently combine paid employment with their caring responsibilities. Using the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the paper examines the effect of caring on employment, hours worked and earnings. The analysis shows that working age carers experience disadvantage. Carers are more likely than non‐carers to reduce their hours of work or exit from the labour force, and earn lower levels of income. In planning for an ageing population, policies will need to address these negative effects and privatised costs of caring if the supply of informal care is to be sustained in the future.