Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Increase in life expectancy due to public health intervention causes population aging. This study focuses on enhancing the longer working life of the aged population living in western European countries. This research highlights healthy working life of aging workforce, i.e. disease and disability free aging workforce who can contribute to society and the economy of their countries. This study has two main objectives. The first objective is to study the geo-spatial distribution of aged workers who are capable to contribute in the Western Economy. The second objective is to establish a relationship between duration of working life and healthy life expectancy based on self-perceived health. This study is based on the data available in the database of Eurostat – Mortality(demo_mar), Health(hlth) and Labour Market(labour). Eurostat is a Directorate-General of the European Commission located in Luxembourg. It is clear from concepts based on the data that there is a positive correlation between duration of working life and health life expectancy. Healthy life expectancy as well as duration of working life are higher in Iceland and Switzerland than other Western European countries while the same are lower in Belgium and Italy. It is concluded from the results that working life can be increased with the increase in health life expectancy based on self-perceived health. Overall, it can be said that perception and capability to work are indicators that determine the working life.