Health and the older worker
An interesting post on ING’s new eZonomics blog points the reader to a new study on older workers and health. The findings — as reported in The Lancet — don’t at first glance look terribly surprising:
A poor work environment and health complaints before retirement were associated with a steeper yearly increase in the prevalence of suboptimum health while still in work, and a greater retirement-related improvement; however, people with a combination of high occupational grade, low demands, and high satisfaction at work showed no such retirement-related improvement.
In simple terms, this is saying that if a worker is happy, their health is better. Anyone who has ever had a bad job could have told them that! But the study, of course takes it further.
Working life for older workers needs to be redesigned to achieve higher labour-market participation.
This has broad implications, given the trend away from final salary pensions and the general view that workers are going to have to work longer than in previous generations. Companies that are faced with workers who cannot easily retire because of a lack of pension savings, that need people to work longer and that are subject to increasing anti-age discrimination will need to take the employment needs of older employees on board.
It may not be easy. As the ING post points out, the OECD looks at the issue in a 2006 report entitled “Live Longer, Work Longer”. It began its report:
In an era of rapid population ageing, many employment and social policies, practices and attitudes that discourage work at an older age have passed their sell-by date and need to be overhauled. They not only deny older workers choice about when and how to retire but are costly for business, the economy and society.
Consider the fact that corporations are considered citizens under US law. They have deep pockets and legislators listen to people with deep pockets.Our educational systems are tied to corporate interests which is why arts and humanities have been all but stripped from educational circles while the sciences and mathematics take top priority.Retirement costs money. If a worker can keep on working into old age then the likelihood of paying out very much before the retiree dies is much less.Want to keep workers happy? It can be done by making sure they have a safety net. In the Netherlands a person who looses their job can remain on unemployment as long as they are going to school or looking for work. They don’t have to worry about loosing their homes or going without food or health care.With that kind of stress off of the shoulders of American workers it would be easy for them to stay happy and healthy, and thus much more productive. Because they would be at work by choice. And not because they need the money.This article looks at ways to maximize the millage an employer can get out of a worker while investing as little as possible in them. If our courts would do the right thing and remove citizen status from corporate America, then the most important constituents to the legislature would once again be the American citizen and not some amorphous facsimile of a “person” with no individual identity.This article shows how it’s in the interests of business to do better by the employee. But it doesn’t address these problems from the point of the citizen. In other words it doesn’t focus on making sure that citizens have more freedom to choose their occupations by making education more easily accessible. And by providing a financial safety net that does not force them into jobs where they would be the least productive.Even the mightiest trees still get their water from the roots. The citizen is the root of the economy. Our workers are best served when our government prioritizes investment in the individual citizen over investment in corporations.We need a REAL social safety net. But all we get is lip service and taxes, which go to keeping “the economy” alive at the expense of the citizens that support it.