Understanding the Aging Workforce Defining a Research Agenda (2022) / Chapter Skim
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9 A Research Agenda to Promote Understanding of Employment among Older Workers
9 A Research Agenda to Promote Understanding of Employment among Older Workers
Pages 189-210
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From page 189... ...
ONCLUSION I: Older workers' preferences for work and specific work arrangements, their expec C tations about available work opportunities and financial stability, and the constraints on their work opportunities and behaviors reflect the impact of both age bias and social and economic inequalities. This bias and these inequalities structure economic opportunity throughout the life course and lead to wide disparities in employment and retirement pathways at older ages.
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From page 190... ...
They can serve as a call to ensure that future research considers the heterogeneity of experiences within the older worker population, including the diverse ways in which work and retirement outcomes are shaped by broader contexts of age bias and social and economic inequality throughout the life course. Considering this heterogeneity will provide a more comprehensive and robust understanding of the benefits and disadvantages of extending work lives, which in turn can inform the development of policies that enable work at older ages in ways that account for the specific challenges vulnerable populations face and, therefore, improve their well-being.
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From page 191... ...
Understanding the role of employers and employees in facilitating longer working lives is paramount today, in light of the unprecedented aging of the population and the resulting pension reforms that are being implemented to deal with this demographic reality. Important areas for future research include the implementation of workplace policies; policies and practices that affect work and retirement; and the role of age discrimination.
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From page 192... ...
Though this relationship is crucial to understanding the purpose of various workplace policies and practices affecting older workers, few researchers account for employer and employee interests and the institutional context when analyzing workplace policies and practices affecting older workers. Moreover, little research examines the potential role of employee voice in shaping the organi zational practices and context that affect older workers.
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From page 193... ...
Clearly identifying both the type of flexibility and whether it is voluntary will be crucial for ascertaining the effects of flexible work arrangements on the retention of older workers. Only limited research examines the effects of different forms of flexible arrangements on the timing of retirement.
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From page 194... ...
. Audit studies provide direct evidence of age discrimination in hiring, especially for those near the age of normal retirement, with women facing greater odds of experiencing age-based discrimination in later life than men.
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From page 195... ...
and older workers' reports of discrimination: coworkers' and managers' reported and observed discriminatory behavior toward older people. There is compelling evidence from field experiments that older workers suffer from age discrimination in hiring, demonstrating that stereotypes about older workers do affect employment decisions, which constrains labor demand for older workers.
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From page 196... ...
Research is needed to understand inclusive organizational policies that mitigate against age-related biases entering into decisions at all stages and levels of analysis and whether these policies actually create a more inclusive culture. Organizational decisions affect the assessment, formal or informal, of the productivity of older workers, and there is also concern that age bias in evaluations of performance and productivity negatively affect older workers.
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From page 197... ...
To study the multi-layered and dynamic impact of workplace practices on work and retirement pathways, it would be invaluable to establish a panel survey or modifying an existing federal survey with sufficient variation at both the workplace and individual levels. Such a panel survey should collect data from a random selection of workplaces from the population of employers, covering all sectors and all sizes of workplaces.
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From page 198... ...
Adults who face limited work opportunities during their prime working years will face a considerable disadvantage when reaching retirement. Historically disadvantaged subgroups are more likely to face involuntary retirement due to disability and job loss and are less likely to have control over when, where, and how much to work (Chapters 4 and 5)
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From page 199... ...
A Life Course Perspective of Inequality Though research on older workers often focuses on workers ages 50 and over, the processes that structure unequal work and retirement pathways at older ages do not begin at age 50. Applying a life-course lens to work and retirement pathways means recognizing that the resources and work/retirement options available in mid- and later-life accumulate and are shaped through prior life-course experiences of advantages and disadvantages; the relationships in which individuals are embedded; and the historical, policy, organizational, and social contexts in which they occur (Chapters 3 and 4)
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From page 200... ...
CONCLUSION 2.1: The processes that structure unequal work and retirement pathways at older ages do not begin at age 50. Research adopting a life-course conceptual lens can promote understanding of disparities in later adulthood by underscoring the cumulative impact of the multilayered embeddedness of lives in ongoing biographies and in historical and institutional environments.
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From page 201... ...
. We also need to understand any simultaneous participation in formal and informal sector jobs, involuntary job separations that lead to labor force withdrawal before normal retirement age, barriers to work at older ages, sources of income, multiple occupations, sporadic jobs, access to health care and other labor benefits, and eligibility and take-up rates of supplemental income support programs for these low-income older adults (Chapters 4 and 8)
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From page 202... ...
Knowing and tracing these pathways, especially across a diversity of populations, could help clarify the role of employment and civic engagement policies and practices in later life. CONCLUSION 2.4: Social networks play an important role in labor force participation and employ ment opportunities among younger workers; however, less is known about how these social mechanisms function with advancing age, as social networks retract, especially when individuals are pressed to retire or if they live in communities with few employment opportunities.
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From page 203... ...
Financial security in old age is more tenuous for members of historically disadvantaged groups due to their lower wealth. It is critical to conduct research that analyzes the lifetime earnings, saving, and wealth accumulation of historically disadvantaged groups, including lower-skilled vulnerable workers with discontinuous work histories and multiple or sporadic jobs, to better understand their path ways to retirement and income security in old age, including the effectiveness of public policy supports.
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From page 204... ...
In particular, it is necessary to understand their labor transitions in and out of work, and in and out of the formal and informal sectors. There is also a need to better understand any simultaneous participation in formal and informal sector jobs, involuntary job separations that lead to labor force withdrawal before normal retirement age, barriers to work at older ages, sources of income, multiple occupations, sporadic jobs, access to healthcare and other labor benefits, and eligibility and take-up rates of supplemental income support programs for low-income older adults because these likely differ in important ways from those of more affluent older adults.
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From page 205... ...
In particular, such surveys should gather more data on workers with frequent labor transitions, on jobs in both the formal and informal sectors, on work schedules and benefits, on workers with and without labor contracts, on methods of payment for workers, and on other variables that could provide a better understanding of the labor history for vulnerable individuals. Previous qualitative and quantitative research in the United States on self-employed gig workers, the informal sector, and low-income populations, as well as surveys developed for other countries with large proportions of individuals in poverty, could provide insights on how to better collect data for workers with complex work arrangements, multiple jobs, frequent transitions in and out of the labor force, or jobs in the informal sector or in the gig economy (Chapter 2)
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From page 206... ...
. Moreover, racial and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes will exacerbate disparities in access to employment opportunities at older ages, leading to greater economic inequality in retirement (Chapter 4)
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From page 207... ...
Research can examine the tradeoffs between the demands of informal caregiving and those of employment and how these dynamics influence retirement pathways. Caregiving demands may also create barriers for public policies that aim at facilitating employment for older adults, such as the Senior Community Employment Program (Chapter 8)
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From page 208... ...
COVID-19 testing and vaccination mandates, social distancing where possible, and remote working have increased dramatically, underscoring the importance of employers in establishing workplace policies and practices that increase employee safety and enable continued work. Depending on how they are imple mented, these changes could have long-term benefits for older workers by increasing flexibility in work hours and schedules, or they could create new barriers to work by creating the expectation that remote workers are available "on demand." Moreover, the shift to remote work may have reduced the impact or visibility of older workers' social- and knowledge-based contributions to productivity, reducing their value to employers.
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From page 209... ...
But these individual preferences, expectations, and constraints operate within complex systems of social and economic inequality that develop throughout the life course, and thus may be specific to the historical circumstances in which individuals enter adulthood and, later, retirement ages. Despite substantial research on older workers over the past several decades, we know too little about the well-being of older workers, that of older individuals who are not working but may wish to do so under certain conditions, and that of older individuals working despite their preference to retire.
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