Research on working life and its development
The length and timing of working life and the earnings received during that period in life affect the pension accumulation on an individual level. On a system level, working lives affect the financial sustainability of the pension system. The socio-political aims of extending working lives and raising the employment rate increase the need for research data on the subject.
Under the research programme, we will do research on stages of and changes to working life that are significant from the point of view of pensions, and on the length of working life and income and related changes per population groups. A central subarea of our research is the labour market participation of the oldest working-age population. In addition, we focus on the early and mid-stages of working life and changes to and interruptions in working life. An increasing number of persons work in retirement. Under this research programme, we will therefore examine how common it is for people in Finland to work while drawing a pension and the underlying reasons for doing so.
New studies
Employers’ norms about the “right” ages to work and retire are higher in countries with higher retirement ages
For policies to extend working lives to succeed, also employers need to adapt their norms about when workers are too young to retire and when they are too old to work. Employers’ retirement age norms in Europe are generally higher than those of employees. Employers tend to have more positive retirement age norms in countries that have higher statutory retirement ages. The study comparing retirement age norms in 27 countries in 2018 is in the journal Work, Aging and Retirement.
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International study on impact of labour market uncertainties on pension adequacy for youth
Atypical employment relationships and employment interruptions, combined with recent pension reforms, weaken the pension adequacy of today’s youth in Europe. The development of the labour market position of the young must be continuously monitored. The effects of pension reforms on the young should be carefully assessed already when preparing pension reforms.
Conducted within the EU Cost Action YOUNG-IN network, this edited volume gathered the comparative and country-specific studies of 15 researchers from different countries.
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Educational inequalities in employment narrowed among 60–68-year-old Finns
A new study be the Finnish Centre for Pensions (ETK) explores employment among 60–68-year-old Finns and the magnitude of educational inequalities in employment over the period 2006–2018. The results show that the employment rate of older people increased over the study period. As a rule, educational inequalities in employment narrowed among the 60–62- and 66–68-year-olds and remained stable among the 63–65-year-olds. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
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A majority of employers find workers older than 55 to be more reliable and independent than the average worker
Around half of the employers assessed that the problem-solving ability as well as knowledge and skills of workers older than 55 are better than of the average worker, a fresh study by the Finnish Centre for Pensions reveals.
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Europeans exit the labour markets at an increasingly later age – educational gaps still visible in continued working
In all European countries, people continue working longer than before. Yet the low-educated exit the labour market earlier than the high-educated. In Finland, the effective exit age, that is, the age at which people leave the labour market, has increased relatively much. This is evident from a study by the Finnish Centre for Pensions, in which educational gaps in the effective exit ages in 16 European countries between the years 2003–2020 were compared.
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