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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Trends in health and ability to work among the older working population | | Author(s) | Eileen M Crimmins, Sandra L Reynolds, Yasuhiko Saito |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 54B, no 1, January 1999 |
| Pages | pp S31-S40 |
| Keywords | Employment of older people ; Health [elderly] ; Work capacity ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Because of recent changes in US social security regulations that will soon begin to raise the age of eligibility for full retirement benefits, it is important to determine whether health and ability to work at older ages have improved in recent years. Individual-level data from the National Health Interview Survey from 1982 to 1993 are used in this analysis. Trends in self-reported ability to work, presence of disease, and causes of actual work limitation are examined. Men and women in their 60s report significant improvement in their ability to work, to the extent that the percentage unable to work at age 67 in 1993 is lower than the percentage unable to work at age 65 in 1982. This improvement appears to be similar across racial and ethnic groups, and educational sub-groups, apart from African Americans and those with lower educational attainment who are less healthy to begin with. The improvement in work ability may be explained by decline in the prevalence of cerebro- or cardiovascular diseases and arthritis. The level of observed improvement in work ability means that the legislated rise in age of full eligibility for social security benefits should be more than compensated for by the improved ability to work. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990423010 A |
| Classmark | GC: CC: BIL: 3J: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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