Work, age, health and work participation – a model

The work force in aging societies will change during the next decades. The proportion of people participating actively in the labor market will decrease whereas at the same time the proportion of older employees will increase. Thus, a society should be aware of both factors keeping people employed and factors leading to early exit from the labor market. For a long time respective research has focused on health as the predominant important influencing early exit from the labor market. However, recent data indicates that in Germany one third of the older workforce (aged 50 – 64 years) is working in spite of poor health while half of those of same age but not working is enjoying good health (personal communication Hermann Burr, BAuA). These findings indicate that factors other than health may explain work participation of older people. Inspired by these figures and by recent findings of European studies into work, age and health we developed a theoretical model on the complex associations between socioeconomic status, work, life style, work ability, health, and work motivation assuming that all these factors with their complex interactions and mediations in the end decide on labor market participation (Peter & Hasselhorn 2013). The basic idea of this model assumes that health is still important for labor market participation but influences work participation only indirectly through work motivation and work ability. This complex model describes the underlying analytical concept of the lidA (leben in der Arbeit, living at work) study. lidA is a prospective investigation covering 6339 employed men and women at baseline belonging to two age cohorts, born in 1959 and 1965 respectively. The sample has been drawn from the ‘Integrated Employment Biografies’ (IEB), held at the IAB (Dorner et al. 2010). lidA covers a broad range of questionnaire-based-information about work-related factors, health-adverse behaviors, morbidity, sociodemographic information, individual factors like coping and many more., The workshop presents findings from the baseline assessment of lidA. The findings relate to those parts of the above mentioned model which include information about socioeconomic status, precarious jobs, work stress, non-work stress factors, coping and health in relation to age and gender. Results from three confirmatory analytical models will be presented. The analyses were challenging with regard to both methodology and complexity of associations under study. Findings include associations between precarious jobs and depressiveness, the mediating effect of work stress and social isolation in the association between education and depressiveness and the role of gender in the association between work stress and depressiveness. Implications for the development of the future aging workforce and for preventive activities will be discussed.