Sarah Vickerstaff

This multi-disciplinary volume brings together original research from diverse disciplinary backgrounds investigating how we can define and operationalise a bio-psychosocial model of ill-health to improve work participation in middle and later life.

A challenge to the assumption that there is appropriate employment available for people who are expected to retire later and the gender-neutral way the expectation for extending working lives is presented in most policy-making circles.

This collection explores a variety of job transitions for older people, including voluntary job moves, coming out of unemployment, temporary labour and passages into retirement. Each chapter hears the voices of older workers and employers, and is positioned within the context of various European countries, with important lessons for future policy.

Dealing directly and exclusively with the issue of older workers, this book brings together up-to-the minute research findings by many of the leading researchers and writers in the field exploring key issues that will influence public policy in the UK and beyond. 

Any attempt by governments to stem the tide of early retirement will need to focus as much on employers' management of human resources as on the impacts of social policy. This report focuses on this previously neglected area: employers' policies and practice as a dynamic force in retirement decisions.