The extension of late working life in Germany: trends, inequalities, and the East-West divide

Abstract

The extension of late working life has been proposed as a potential remedy for the challenges of aging societies. For Germany, surprisingly little is known about trends and social inequalities in the length of late working life. Here, we use data from the German Microcensus to estimate working life expectancy from age 55 onwards for the 1941-1955 birth cohorts. We adjust our calculations of working life expectancy for working hours, and present results for western and eastern Germany by gender, education, and occupation. While working life expectancy has increased across cohorts, we find strong regional and socioeconomic disparities. Decomposition analyses show that among males, socioeconomic differences are predominantly driven by variation in employment rates; whereas among women, variation in working hours is also highly relevant. Older eastern German women have longer working lives than older western German women, which is likely attributable to the GDR legacy of high female employment.

Estimating trends in working life expectancy based on health insurance data from Germany – Challenges and advantages

“…Previous studies analyzing time trends in WLE in Germany focused mostly on the higher working-age ( Loichinger & Weber, 2016 ; Weber & Loichinger, 2020 ) and reported mainly partial WLE for specific age ranges ( Dudel et al, 2021 ; Weber & Loichinger, 2020 ). In addition, there are differences either in the definition of the working population ( Dudel et al, 2021 ) or in the time period studied. Therefore, findings cannot be compared directly across the entire period ( Loichinger & Weber, 2016 ).…”

“…Previous research investigating time trends or social inequalities in WLE has been primarily based on survey data (e.g. Dudel et al, 2021 ; Loichinger & Weber, 2016 ; Nurminen, 2012 ; Weber & Loichinger, 2020 )). For Germany, studies on trends in WLE reported substantial increases at age 15 ( Eurostat, 2022 ) and 18 ( Heller et al, 2022 ) as well as at age 50 and above ( Heller et al, 2022 ; Loichinger & Weber, 2016 ; Weber & Loichinger, 2020 ) during the last two decades.…”

“…This is due to the lack of official life tables by socio-economic characteristics in Germany, which are often used to calculate WLE based on survey data. To the best of our knowledge there is so far only one study which investigated time trends in paid full-time equivalent WLE at age 55 to 64 in Germany, ignoring the effect of mortality on WLE ( Dudel et al, 2021 ). This study found that educational inequalities in WLE are substantial and that disparities have increased, at least in East Germany ( Dudel et al, 2021 ).…”

Has the share of the working life expectancy that is spent receiving a partial or full disability pension changed in Finland over the period 2005–2018? A longitudinal register-based study

“…Partial work participation has often been addressed based on working hours, which were recently used also to adjust employment to an FTE rate when calculating WLE. 29 As our data did not include information on working hours, we introduce a novel measure to assess the magnitude of work contribution during employment based on earned income. More precisely, we estimated FTE proportion of time spent in work by combining annual information on the number of days employed and the total taxable work income, including wage and entrepreneurial income.…”

“…Partial work participation has often been addressed based on working hours, which were recently used also to adjust employment to an FTE rate when calculating WLE 29. As our data did not include information on working hours, we introduce a novel measure to assess the magnitude of work contribution during employment based on earned income.…”