This field report provides detailed information on the methodological approach as well as on the process of data collection and analysis in EIWO project III – “Mechanisms and Origins of Late Working Life Exclusion”. EIWO project III is part of the qualitative part of the EIWO programme and is – together with EIWO project VI, VII, and VIII from phase II – one of the four projects in which primary data is collected. EIWO uses a mixed-methods approach in its nine sub-projects, so that quantitative and qualitative methods are used in combination to investigate – from a life course perspective – the topic of late working life and the potential of extension of working lives on different levels (micro, meso and macro level). Due to the different methodological approaches, results from some projects provide evidence for further investigations in other sub-projects, whereby, for example, results of the qualitative investigations can be validated using large data sets. In projects in the field of life course research, a mixed-methods approach is widely used because it allows for a detailed investigation of the structural, institutional and individual factors influencing the life course. EIWO project III focuses in particular on the micro level by taking the perspective of individuals and thus provides a basis on which quantitative analyses, e.g. in EIWO project IV, can be built on. “The main aims of project III are to analyse the nature and sources of inequalities in late working life employment/retirement and to identify individual/family responses and coping strategies” (Application EIWO programme). Based on these aims, the following research questions were formulated for EIWO project III:

• What events and circumstances can be identified over the life course that lead to social inequalities/exclusion in late working life employment from the individual perspective? What are the explanatory mechanisms? 
• How are exclusion risks and inequalities assessed on the individual level in late working life? Do persons experience social inequalities/exclusion? 
• If they experience exclusion/inequalities: What coping strategies are/were used to reduce inequalities/exclusion? 
• What can be learned from individual responses as to how meso-level organisational policies and macro-level social policies help or hinder transitions?

In the following, it will be described why a qualitative research approach was chosen for this project and what characterises this approach. Then, the research instruments and the inclusion criteria for the sample will be explained. The third chapter illustrates the field phase, including the recruitment phase, the final composition of the sample and the conduct of the interviews, as well as challenges that arose during the field phase and the chosen approaches. Finally, the data analysis method is discussed and the report is concluded with a short summary.

Female-coded family work keeps women away from late working life – but it makes a difference where in Europe they live because Nordic countries do not recognize this divide.

Key Findings

• Childcare impacts upon late working life – women tend to be employed part time or outside paid labor if they engaged in childcare during earlier life stages; men with children are more likely to be in full-time employment.
• Women are more affected by early working life decisions – previous labor-market participation or a reduction in working hours due to childcare obligations have a greater impact on late working life.
• A North–South divide in Europe – it is mostly in southern and western Europe that women’s domestic work or part-time employment prevents full-time employment in late working life, but in northern Europe, female employment in late working life is barely affected by previous family obligations.

This research on gendered late-working-life trajectories is part of the research programme EIWO. Schmitz, W., Naegele, L., Frerichs, F., & Ellwardt, L. (2023): Gendered late working life trajectories, family history and welfare regimes: Evidence from SHARELIFE. European Journal of Ageing, 20, 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-023-00752-3 (open access). The paper received the "Best Paper Award 2023 for Early Career Researchers" from the German Gerontological Association (see https://www.dggg-online.de/best-paper-award.html).

Context

The demographic context for the EIWO project is continued population ageing and, especially, growth in the numbers of very elderly people, which applies to all four countries in this project: Germany, Poland, Sweden and the UK. However, the common ageing trend is unequally distributed. In particular there remain significant gaps in life expectancy (LE) and health life expectancy (HLE) both between countries and within them. For example LE differences based on socio-economic status, income, and education are present in all four countries. In terms of HLE, Swedish women have HLE at birth, that is, on average, 6 years longer than German women, 8 years longer than Polish women and 11 years longer than British women.

European societies need to increase the participation in work over the life course to support the provision of qualified labour and to meet the challenges for social security systems under the condition of their ageing populations. One of the key ambitions is to extend people’s working lives and to postpone labour market exit and retirement where possible. This requires informed policies, and the research programme EIWO – ‘Exclusion and Inequality in Late Working Life: Evidence for Policy Innovation towards Inclusive Extended Work and Sustainable Working Conditions in Sweden and Europe’ – aims to push the boundaries of knowledge about late working life and the potential of its inclusive and equal prolongation via a theoretically driven, gender-sensitive combination of multi-level perspectives. EIWO takes a life course approach on exclusion and inequality by security of tenure, quality of work, workplaces, and their consequences. It identifies life course policies, promoting lifelong learning processes and flexible adaptation to prolong working lives and to avoid increased exclusion and inequality. Moreover, it provides evidence for policies to ensure both individual, company and societal benefits from longer lives. To do so, EIWO orientates its analyses systematically to the macro-political contexts at the European Union level and to the policy goals expressed in the respective official statements, reports and plans.

This report systematizes this ambitious approach. Relevant documents such as reports, green books and other publications of the European Commission (EC), the European Parliament (EP), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as those of social partners and research institutions, have been systematically scanned and evaluated. In addition, relevant decisions of European summits have been considered. The selection of documents claims completeness regarding relevant and generally available publication, while relevance is defined from the point of view of EIWO’s interests.

It is the aim of this report to provide a sound knowledge base for EIWO’s analyses and impact strategies and to contribute to the emerging research on the connection between population ageing and the European policies towards productivity, inclusiveness, equity, resilience and sustainability.

This report aims to answer the following questions:

1. How are EIWO’s conceptual classification and programme objectives reflected in the European Union’s policy programming?
2. How can EIWO’s analyses and impact benefit from a reference to current EU policy considerations, and how does this focus support the outline of policy options and the formulating of possible proposals to Swedish and European stakeholders?

The present report was written during early 2022; analyses were finalized in February 2022 and represent the status until this date.

Work Package (WP) I is the conceptual core of the EIWO project and informs WPs II-IX by providing theoretical embedding. It will do this initially based on the existing literature (a theory paper suggesting combinations of life course, social risk and regime analysis) and then synthesise the results of the following WPs in an iterative way for publication. EIWO will develop social policy macro indicators and their dynamics and draw on the empirical testing in WPs II-VIII to identify connections with life course, intersectionality and social risk theories. The aim is to develop change strategies to guide the prevention and mitigation of late working life exclusion and inequalities by minimising risks across the life course and smoothing late working life transitions. The policy-related concepts of active ageing and life-long learning will be key reference points for the project and will be discussed further in subsequent working papers.

EIWO aims to push the boundaries of knowledge about late working life and its potential for inclusivity and equality via a theoretically driven, gender-sensitive combination of multi-level perspectives. To follow this aim, EIWO takes a life course approach to late working live in the context of demographic and social change in Sweden and Europe. In doing so, EIWO focusses on individual life courses against the backdrop of agency, workplaces, branches, economic conditions and their impact on exclusion and inequality in late working life. It aims to identify perspectives of life course policies promoting to prolong working lives and to avoid the increased selective exclusion and inequality often associated with this development

Introduction

This text is a first full draft that includes all the planned sections and covers key aspects of late working life issues in Sweden.

Chapter 1 presents key statistical data for population structure and demographic processes in Sweden as well as labour market participation among the older groups of the population. It is mapping the main political economic discourses that frame late working life and brings in some historically important points for understanding the developments in the Swedish discourse. The aspects of the welfare regime and its transformations after the 1990s are included.

Chapter 2 briefly introduces the Swedish social model and discusses the roles of social partners and institutional context. It also informs about particularities regarding authorities and unique aspects of the Swedish social model. The most information-rich part is the presentation of the discourses and the positions of the main actors in the Swedish labour market. They actively contribute to shaping the political agenda and policy outcomes that translate into specific legislation.

Chapter 3 presents patterns and characteristics of current late working life in Sweden, and focusses on late labour market participation and exit, working conditions, sectoral distributions, and lifelong learning aspects. The main inequalities are discussed under these headings.

Chapter 4 is an account of the most influential policies for late working life in Sweden. It covers three main sections. Namely, retirement and pensions, disability insurance and policies related to the labour market inclusion. These policies are analysed regarding their impact on extending working lives as well as their potential to decrease inequalities in the labour market, in particular amongst older workers.

The text provides, finally, a brief overview of developments and policies regarding late working life in Sweden. Moreover, it sketches how these developments and policies affect inequalities in late working life. This is followed by an appendix containing additional data.

Extending Working Lives (EWLs hereafter) is an important policy goal across many Western countries. This document traces how policy developments have formed the existing EWLs agenda in the UK context. It explores the interrelationship between demographic shifts, policy reform, changing organisational and cultural practices, and technological drivers across groups with diverse life course trajectories. It needs to be borne in mind that UK development is influenced by wider, global influences and shared experiences, such as the OECD level shift toward later retirement pathways. There are also imminent political and cultural changes taking place in the UK which will have an ongoing influence on EWLs, such as the European Union exit.

Section 7 provides an overview of the development and framing of policies relevant to EWL, as well as levels of participation. Section 8 focuses on macro national regime characteristics and socio-demographic characteristics across subgroups of older people. Section 9 goes into greater detail on the main inequalities which have a negative impact on EWLs and Section 12 draws on the key policies that impact on EWLs, with consideration of the main inequalities within this.

Preface

The primary task of Work Package 5 is to identify and understand the influence of macro and social changes, population dynamics, cultural swings, and changes in political economy and resulting (social) policy approaches on employment in late life in recent decades. The special focus is on the extent to which different regimes and combinations of policy strategies are associated with different forms and levels of employment in late life and resulting inequalities. For Germany, the focus is on, in particular, the strategic shift from a policy and subsequent practice of promoting early retirement, which lasted from the mid-1970s until about the turn of the millennium (and even longer in some sectors and/or regions) and has since been replaced by a policy aimed at extension of working life (EWL).

EIWO – ‘Exclusion and inequality in late working life: Evidence for policy innovation towards inclusive extended work and suitable working conditions in Sweden and Europe’ (start 2020) – is the third project in a series of interdisciplinary projects on ‘ageing in the world of work’. EIWO is being carried out in selective EU-member states that have dealt with how the measuring of ‘success and failure factors’ can be used to extend working life (EWL) at the various levels (micro, meso, and macro). 

The author of this text is involved in all three projects: work package leader for MOPACT WP 3, principal investigator for EXTEND, and scientific advisor for EIWO. MOPACT WP 3 – Mobilisation the potential of active ageing: Extending working lives (2013 – 2017) – compared EU-wide efforts to extend working life with respect to ‘good practices’ on all levels and served as a starting point for EU-wide recommendations for action. EXTEND – Social inequalities in extending working lives of an ageing workforce: Old and new social inequalities in age-related occupational retirement and pension transitions (2017 - 2019) – focused on social inequalities in the transition phase to retirement and therefore implicitly on socially-selected possibilities and chances of realising a longer working life, including, for example, the professional care sector. EXTEND’s recommendations for action related primarily to preventive measures, above all securing and promoting employability to avoid emerging and/or deepening social inequalities mainly through involuntary/forced early exit. EIWO explicitly takes a life course perspective into account to better recognise and classify exclusion from and social inequalities in the late phases of employment biographies, which have been less pronounced in both MOPACT WP 3 and EXTEND, but with leading insights. 

This paper places these three projects in an overall context and draws relevant conclusions from the EIWO research perspective aimed at understanding a ‘social life course policy’ that considers employees’ biographies and therefore explicitly a gender perspective as reference points.

Känslor av tillhörighet med andra människor betraktas som en viktig och universell del av människans existens. Ensamhet är särskilt relaterat till åldrande och äldre människor. Hur ensamhet pratas om och förstås varierar dock beroende på historiska, kulturella och samhälleliga kontexter. Idag är diskussionerna om ensamhet bland äldre människor intensiva inom svensk dagspress. Konstruktioner inom massmedia har visat sig ha ett betydande inflytande på hur äldre människor värderar sitt eget liv och hur äldre behandlas av det omgivande samhället. Få studier har fokuserat på konstruktioner av äldres ensamhet i massmedia, trots det stora antalet studier om ensamhet och trots att forskning om konstruktioner av äldre inom massmedia är en ofta behandlad fråga inom äldreforskningen. Syftet med denna licentiatavhandling är att undersöka hur ensamhet bland äldre konstrueras och hur ansvaret för att minska ensamhet bland äldre utpekas inom svensk dagsspressen.

I Studie 1 bestod det empiriska materialet av 94 artiklar från svensk dagspress, från åren 2013-2014. Det främsta resultatet var att ensamhet inte utgjorde huvudfokus i artiklarna från svensk dagspress. Ensamhet användes främst som ett begrepp för att motivera behovet av politisk förändring, betona värdet av volontärarbete och för att i forskningsrapporter beskriva riskfaktorer för äldre personers hälsa.

Materialet som analyserades i Studie 2 var 40 artiklar från svensk dagspress, från oktober 2016. Ansvaret för att minska ensamhet bland äldre utpekades mellan välfärdsstatliga institutioner på olika nivåer. Institutioner och politiska partier försvarade de planerade eller genomförda åtgärderna för att minska ensamhet, men erkände också att de inte gör tillräckligt i frågan. Äldre personer konstruerades som mottagare av aktiviteter för att minska ensamhet, och "vi" i "samhället" var de som borde utföra aktiviteter för att minska ensamhet bland äldre. De främsta resultaten från denna avhandling är att ensamhet inte är huvudfokus i artiklarna från svensk dagspress. Istället användes ensamhet som motiv för politisk förändring och för att betona värdet av volontärarbete. Vidare förstås ensamhet bland äldre människor som ett problem som behöver lösas. Massmediala sammanhang och logiker visade sig ha ett inflytande på hur ensamhet bland äldre konstrueras, eftersom frågan huvudsakligen behandlades i lokala debattartiklar, med ambitioner om att åstadkomma förändring.