| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Work, health and the commodification of life's time
— reframing work-life balance and the promise of a long life | | Author(s) | Simon Biggs, Michael McGann, Dina Bowman, Helen Kimberley |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 37, no 7, August 2017 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, August 2017 |
| Pages | pp 1458-1483 |
| Source | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X16000404 |
| Keywords | Employment of older people ; Conditions of employment ; Ageing process ; Health [elderly] ; Life span. |
| Annotation | How to respond to an ageing society has become an increasingly important question, for employers, workers and policy makers. The authors critically engage with that debate, arguing that future approaches to the relationship between work and age should take into account multiple influences on older worker behaviour, including the combination of economic, lifecourse and personal priorities. They consider the international consensus that has emerged about the primacy of work as the solution to what to do with a long life. They then address the uncertain nature of work as it affects older workers, and discuss the commodification of time in relation to a productivist approach to demographic ageing and the attitudes of older workers themselves. A tension is noted between pressures for continuity and discontinuity within the adult life-course; this tension is often eclipsed within a policy discourse that tends to focus on continuity as a route to social legitimacy. Thinking about life-time as a meta-narrative, a tension between existential life priorities and commodification may help to explain the ease with which 'live longer, work longer' policies both dominate and obscure the potential of a long life. Finally, the authors examine the implications for work-life balance and suggest this needs to be radically rethought when addressing the purpose of a longer working life and the promise of a long life in general. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170721008 A |
| Classmark | GC: WKA: BG: CC: BG6 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|