Last Sunday, Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party bucked the European trend by lowering the country's retirement age to 60 for women and 65 for men. The legislation reverses the changes approved in 2012 to raise the age to 67, reflecting moves across the continent to gradually increase the retirement age as workers live longer and stay healthier.

René Böheim warns against policies that would seek to lower retirement ages, observing that “Higher employment for older workers coincides with higher employment for younger workers… Lowering the retirement age decreases the incentives to train and to invest in additional skills, and therefore leads to lower economic growth.”

Carol Graham suggests that flexible arrangements and retirement options are a potential solution for the challenges of unemployment, aging populations, and unsustainable pension systems. “Late-life workers ... under voluntary part- or full-time arrangements, have higher levels of well-being (in some dimensions) than retirees. Higher levels of well-being are in turn associated with better health and greater productivity, suggesting that the benefits of such arrangements could extend beyond the individual to society". 

Further articles on retirement and late-life work:

• The effect of early retirement schemes on youth employment by René Böheim
• Late-life work and well-being by Carol Graham
• Redesigning pension systems by Marek Góra

• Wage policies in the public sector during wholesale privatization (Deutsch) by Jelena Nikolic
• The labor market in Japan, 2000-2016 (Deutsch) by Daiji Kawaguchi and Hiroaki Mori
• Fertility decisions and alternative types of childcare (Deutsch) by Chiara Pronzato
• Trans people, well-being, and labor market outcomes (Deutsch) by Nick Drydakis
• The rise of secularism and its economic consequences (Deutsch) by Fernando A. Lozano
• How does the one child policy impact social and economic outcomes? (Deutsch) by Wei Huang

Visit the IZA World of Labor site for more concise, informative, evidence-based articles across the spectrum of labor economics.

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