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Introduction: Policy Responses to Ageing and the Extension of Working Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2016

Simon Biggs ,
Dina Bowman ,
Helen Kimberley  and
Michael McGann
Simon Biggs
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected]
Dina Bowman
Affiliation:
Research and Policy Centre, Brotherhood of St Laurence. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected]
Helen Kimberley
Affiliation:
Research and Policy Centre, Brotherhood of St Laurence E-mail: [email protected]
Michael McGann
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the relationship between work and ageing has become increasingly visible as a policy issue. It is both reflected in and influenced by changes in macro-economic policy, life-opportunities and social attitudes associated with growing older, as a combination of falling birth rates and increased longevity, and has put pressure on the traditional parameters of the working age. The idea of retiring at a fixed point in the life-course, to enjoy a period of rest or leisure at the end of a working life, emerged in many advanced economies during the 1900s and evolved into policies that encouraged early retirement as the baby-boomers entered the jobs market in the 1960s and 1970s (Phillipson and Smith, 2005). Early retirement, itself a relatively recent development, gave rise to the possibility of a ‘third age’ of leisure and active ageing (Laslett, 1987), but as demographic and economic changes make themselves felt, it is again becoming an uncertain prospect for many older workers (Biggs and McGann, 2015).

Type
Themed Section on Policy Responses to Ageing and the Extension of Working Lives
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 607 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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