Responding well to the challenge of an ageing and shrinking workforce. European Union policies in support of Member State efforts to Retain, Reinforce & Re-integrate Older Workers in employment

Abstract

In response to the ageing and shrinking of the working-age population, the European Union has agreed ambitious goals for raising the employment rate and the exit age of older workers. This article traces the development of EU policy approaches and presents EU-15 figures on the state of affairs. Progress so far has been modest, but EU policies are expected to facilitate the emergence of better regimes of age management within Member States. In turn, this will help Europe move towards its employment targets for the working population aged 55 to 64 years.

Entrepreneurial intentions in the third age: the impact of perceived age norms

“…This research contributes to the current discussion on the aging workforce in developed economies (e.g., Johnson and Zimmermann 1993;von Nordheim 2004;OECD 2001) by examining entrepreneurship at older ages (e.g., Curran and Blackburn 2001;Singh and DeNoble 2003;Weber and Schaper 2004). At least two lines of argumentation explain the recent surge of policy and research interest in entrepreneurship in the third age, which the extant literature defines as people aged 50-plus starting up in business (e.g., Curran and Blackburn 2001;Hart et al 2004;Kautonen et al 2008).…”

Moving European research on work and ageing forward: Overview and agenda

“…Those practices have stimulated the exit of members of the workforce before reaching the established retirement age and have had a significant impact on European societies at different levels (Von Nordheim, 2003). Although retirement has been studied extensively, research about early retirement in the area of work and organizational psychology is still scarce.…”

“…Finally, due to the increasing tendency of the greying of the workforce, most European countries are developing different strategies to keep older employees at work (von Nordheim, 2003). In this respect, recent research has examined what older workers consider as the ''usual'' retirement age (Brown, 2006), or the difference between the expected and the preferred exit age (Esser, 2005).…”

On the motivational drivers of gray entrepreneurship: An exploratory study

“…For example, the 50-to 64-year-old age group in European member states will have increased by 25% by the year 2015 (Morris and Mallier, 2003;Nordheim, 2004). This demographic shift leads to an increase in the number of gray entrepreneurs, who are those that take up self-employment at an age of around 50 (based on a literature analysis performed by the authors on 28 definitions of gray entrepreneurship (Lorrain and Raymond, 1991;Hart and O'Reilly, 2001)).…”