Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis study investigates how various types of pension reforms affect the age‐related policy preferences of different cohorts and whether they reinforce or undermine the generational welfare contract. It uses detailed descriptions from OECD Pensions at a Glance reports to create indicators for pension reforms in 18 European countries between 2008 and 2016. These indicators are combined with European Social Survey data from 2008 and 2016 to measure preferences towards welfare programmes that benefit the old compared to policies that benefit the working population and families with children. A difference‐in‐difference design is applied to test whether there are differences between reform and non‐reform countries and between cohorts. Pension reforms were found to be associated with stronger declines in pro‐old policy preferences in countries that raised the retirement age or introduced private pensions. The results show that although support for pro‐old welfare policies has declined in almost all countries, this has not necessarily undermined the generational welfare contract. Rather, there has been a re‐balancing of preferences towards policies that also favour other generations in other life‐course stages.

During recent decades, labour market participation among older workers in the Netherlands has increased significantly. Postponing workers' labour market withdrawal potentially makes their retirement patterns more uncertain and less predictable. This article uses Dutch register data to analyse de-standardisation and differentiation of retirement trajectories of men and women born between 1940 and 1946 for the age bracket of 59–65 ( N = 12,843). The results indicate that retirement trajectories of men have become more homogeneous, whereas those of women somewhat more heterogeneous. Simultaneously, retirement patterns of both men and women became more complex from one birth year to another.

In an age of 'permanent austerity', growing economic insecurity may increase the demand for protection against labour market risks. At the same time, economic pressures may push governments to scale down on the provision of social protection. In this article, this contradiction is examined by focusing on reforms of two labour market institutions: unemployment benefits and employment protection legislation. It is argued that the incidence of reforms of both institutions follows a different set of logics, depending on the type of economic pressures as well as the political and institutional settings. The article makes use of a new data set on labour market reforms in 14 European countries over the period of 1980–2007. Results from discrete‐time logit‐regression analysis support the main hypotheses that (1) reforming unemployment benefits (UBs) does not follow the same logic as reforming employment protection legislation (EPL), and (2) factors that contribute to expansion/regulation are not the reverse of those that lead to retrenchment/deregulation.

This study investigates the contribution of educational expansion to changes in labour force participation among Europeans aged 55-74 between 2000 and 2019, while accounting for changes in educational inequalities in labour market activity. We use data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) for 26 countries and Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods to analyse the extent to which changes in the education structure may account for rises in labour force participation rates among older workers in these countries, and the degree to which returns to education have changed. Overall, we found that educational expansion is positively associated with increases in labour force participation, albeit with substantial cross-country variation in the scale of this association. A driving factor was the decrease in the share of the population with low education levels, followed by an increase in the share of those with high education levels. While activity rates rose in most countries and among all levels of education, the largest increases were observed among people with a medium level of education. Activity rates of low-educated older workers, especially women, grew at a substantially lower pace in some countries, exacerbating educational inequalities in labour force participation at older ages. The study suggests that educational expansion has been a driver of longer working lives in Europe. However, it also indicates that changes in health, working conditions and age norms at the microlevel, as well as pension and labour market reforms at the macrolevel, can be assumed to have played a dominant role in countries where increases in labour force participation were the most significant.

Abstract
Policies incentivizing longer working lives can remain ineffective if employers are not able and willing to employ an aging workforce. Depending on what employers consider appropriate age norms for work and retirement, they may be more willing to recruit and retain older workers. This study investigates how these retirement age norms differ across Europe and how they are related to country- and gender-specific pension policies and employment practices. The study uses data from the European Social Survey round 9 (collected in 2018) for 27 countries. Employers are identified as self-employed with personnel and managers who supervise others. The data include questions about the ages of when someone is too young to retire and when someone is too old to work. These items are combined and used in a set of multilevel interval regression models to analyze: (a) How employers' retirement age norms differ from those of employees and (b) How employers' retirement age norms vary across countries. The results indicate that, overall, employers have higher retirement age norms than employees, but that the difference narrows substantially once controlled for other factors. Employers' retirement age norms are positively related to countries' gender-specific statutory retirement ages and older-worker employment rates. In the case of statutory retirement ages, this association is stronger among employers than among various socioeconomic groups of employees.

This book brings together contributions by some of the top working life researchers from Finland and abroad. It offers a series of short essay-type chapters covering a broad variety of topics related to how labour markets, work and working life are continuously changing. The book has a strong cross-national approach and stresses the importance of studying both microlevel changes within macrolevel contexts as well as the microlevel mechanisms of changes at the macrolevel. The chapters are grouped in four parts. Part I deals with how life courses have changed, with special focus on the entry of women to the labour market and the determinants of their economic contribution. Part II discusses two circuits of labour migration: that of mostly high-skilled and regulated work and that of mostly low-skilled and unregulated work. However, it also shows that the boundaries between those two are not always clear. Part III focuses on how work itself is changing, using the examples of women attorneys' pro-bono work in Finland and Poland and the use of lean management in the Nordic public sector. Finally, in Part IV the authors explore the power of institutions and ideas in reshaping the way we work while labour markets are under pressure.

This edited book brings together contributions by some of the top work-life researchers from Finland and abroad. It offers a series of short essay-type chapters covering a broad variety of topics related to how labour markets, work and working life are continuously changing. The book has a strong cross-national approach and stresses the importance of studying both microlevel changes within macrolevel contexts as well as the microlevel mechanisms of changes at the macrolevel. The chapters are grouped in four parts. Part I deals with how life courses have changed, with special focus on the entry of women to the labour market and the determinants of their economic contribution. Part II discusses two circuits of labour migration: that of mostly high-skilled and regulated work and that of mostly low-skilled and unregulated work. However, it also shows that the boundaries between those two are not always clear. Part III focuses on how work itself is changing, using the examples of women attorneys' pro-bono work in Finland and Poland and the use of lean management in the Nordic public sector. Finally, in Part IV the authors explore the power of institutions and ideas in reshaping the way we work while labour markets are under pressure. Available in print from online bookstores e.g. Booky.fi and Adlibris. Contents: Preface / Pertti Koistinen 1. Shaping and reshaping boundaries of work: A framework for analysing complex and multifaceted change / Aart-Jan Riekhoff PART I: THE LIFE COURSE AND GENDER IN THE LABOUR MARKET 2. Welfare state entry and exit over the life course: Employment and the sustainability of the welfare state in different worlds of welfare / Olli Kangas, Joakim Palme & Markus Kainu 3. Cross-national analysis of women's economic contribution / Saki Kudo PART II: VARIETIES OF MIGRATION AND WORK 4. Crossing the boundary to Europe: Finns on transnational careers in the European Union / Saara Koikkalainen 5. Examining the role of institutions in shaping migrant reproductive labour / Merita Jokela 6. Polish posted workers in the transnational space of subcontracting: Making ethnographic sense of new employment relations / Anna Matyska PART III: NEW WAYS OF WORKING 7. "It is also about helping people": Women attorneys' commitment to public service and incentives for pro bono work in Finland and Poland / Marta Choroszewicz 8. The rise of lean organisations in Nordic countries: How recent changes in public sector management are shaping working life / Armi Mustosmäki, Tomi Oinas & Timo Anttila PART IV: THE POLITICS AND POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGING WORK 9. Labour market reforms in times of globalisation / Aart-Jan Riekhoff 10. Decentralisation in the context of the competitiveness discourse: The Finnish labour market relations system since 2008 / Paul Jonker-Hoffrén 11. Alternative for work, low-income supplement or investment? Exploring the idea of basic income in the Finnish public debate / Johanna Perkiö

This article examines the individual- and country-level factors that contribute to the risk of working unsocial hours in 30 European countries. Using the EU labor force survey data, the authors test for the influence of labor market dualization, product- and labor market regulation, and collective bargaining on the individual risk of working unsocial hours. The risks of working unsocial hours are strongly dualized in all countries, but the size of the risk gap between low-skilled outsiders and high-skilled insiders varies. In countries where collective bargaining plays a greater role in regulating work hours the gap between low- and high-skilled workers is smaller.

PurposeThis article investigates whether employers are more likely to employ older workers when faced with a shortage of qualified labour. Furthermore, it analyses whether in such cases age stereotypes moderate employers' preferences towards four employment options: (1) supporting workers to continue until the retirement age, (2) encouraging workers to continue beyond the retirement age, (3) recruiting someone older than 55 and (4) (re)hiring someone who has retired.Design/methodology/approachData were drawn from a survey conducted among Finnish employers in 2021 (response rate = 66%, N = 1,442). Applying factor analysis to questions about older workers' qualities compared to those of average workers, a distinction was made between perceptions of experience-related and adaptability-related qualities. Generalised ordered logistic regression models were estimated to analyse the relations of preferences for each employment option with experiencing recruitment problems, workplace age stereotypes and interactions between these.FindingsExperiencing recruitment problems was positively related to preferences for hiring a retired person. Employers with difficulties in recruitment were more likely to support work until the retirement age and recruit someone over 55, but only if they had above-average positive perceptions of older workers' experience-related qualities. Employers confronted with recruitment difficulties were more likely to encourage workers to continue beyond the retirement age if they had more positive perceptions of older workers' adaptability-related qualities.Originality/valueThis study shows that, even when confronted with labour shortages and population ageing, workplace age stereotypes still pose a potential obstacle for employers to make the best use of an older workforce.

Abstract
This article investigates how a firm's workforce characteristics affect an individual's timing of exit from the labor market. It analyzes the relations between the age, skill, and wage structures of companies and the risk of labor market exit of Finnish older workers by using the detailed longitudinal register-based Finnish Linked Employer–Employee Data. The study follows the Finnish working population born between 1942 and 1950 (N = 216,713). Multilevel discrete-time survival analysis with individuals nested in firms is applied to estimate the risk of permanent exit from work between the ages of 53 and 68. The results show that these risks differ between firms: greater diversity in age and education levels among the workforce as well as seniority-based wage systems within a firm decrease the propensity of early exit, while being employed at a firm with an older staff increases the risk of exit. The findings from interactions between individual- and firm-level characteristics further illustrate that one's individual characteristics matter in relation to the characteristics of the overall firm's workforce. Being dissimilar from one's coworkers, especially in terms of skills and education, can reduce the risk of early exit.

Abstract
The aims of this study were to explore patterns of work and retirement of Finnish employees and self-employed persons in a pension system with a flexible old-age retirement age and how income develops in these patterns. We used individual-level register data from Statistics Finland of the total Finnish birth cohort born in 1949. The cohort was 62–70 years old over the study period 2011–2019. Sequence and cluster analyses were used to identify typical trajectories of individuals' transitions in and out of salaried work and self-employment and work in old-age retirement. Our analysis yielded a ten-cluster solution: four clusters were found for employees who did not continue working in retirement (62%), four clusters for those employees who continued working in retirement (26%), and two clusters for the self-employed (12%). The clusters differed by the timing of retirement. The results showed that employees who retired earlier on an old-age pension and who were not working afterwards had lower incomes. Their incomes also decreased after old-age retirement. Employees who worked for several years in retirement had higher incomes which remained stable between the ages of 62 and 70. We found two types of self-employed persons: those who continued working in retirement with high incomes and those who stopped working earlier and had lower incomes. The results indicate that inequalities between lower and higher income groups might become exacerbated in a flexible retirement system.