ILPC 2026

From the 1970s until the mid-1990s, most European countries followed a strategy of early retirement to relieve their strained labour markets. Yet, when demographic projections anticipated an unavoidable ‘greying’ of national labour forces, these ‘externalisation measures’ increasingly were considered as socially and financially unsustainable. Many European governments revised their labour market and welfare policies accordingly to foster higher employment among senior workers. Legal retirement ages were raised and public pension benefits were cut to reduce the incentives for early retirement. Furthermore, employment-sustaining measures such as active labour market policies or lifelong learning were increasingly implemented. These measures were often referred to as ‘active ageing’ policies, a term that has gained remarkable popularity in public and academic discourse.

ost recent figures indeed suggest that these policies have been effective, as older workers’ employment rates have risen substantially since the turn of the millennium. Yet, it remains an open question whether this aggregate increase has spread equally among all labour market strata or whether certain labour market groups are structurally excluded from this upward trend. We argue that - simultaneous to the increase in late-career employment – active ageing policies have led to an increase in social inequalities among the older workforce. Particularly weak labour market groups –those with low education, in blue-collar occupations or working under hazardous conditions – have hardly been able to profit from employability measures while at the same time being confronted with an increasing pressure to prolong their working careers.

To substantiate this allegation empirically, we provide a stylized sketch of major institutional trends based on most-recent macro data. Data from available micro studies will then be used to reconstruct over-time shift in social inequalities in late career employment within European countries.