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Secondary Dementias and Prevention
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Care Work in the EU: Support Measures in a Context of Demographic Change
Robert Anderson

Aging in the United States and South Korea: Reexamining the Recommendations of the Commission on Global Aging
Paul S. Hewitt

The number of centenarians in Europe
Jean-Marie Robine and Yasuhiko Saito

The Elderly Worker’s Exit from the Company
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Learning Against Aging. Training Opportunities for the Elderly to Learn in the New Technologies
Elisabetta Risi

Possible Activation Strategies for Older Workers Dismissed Early from Employment
Francesco Pirone

The Labour Market for Older Workers in Sweden: Changes and Prospects
Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist and Eskil Wadensjö

Italy and Denmark from Early Retirement to Active Ageing. Problems and Solutions for Structural Unemployment and Pension Funding
Furio Stamati

The Global Financial Crisis: A Challenge and Trial Concerning the Bulgarian Pension Model
Plamen Yordanov

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The current dimensions of the socio-economic development of Bulgaria impose the multi-pillar/multi-stratum model of pension security, which guarantees the simultaneous existence, coordination and mutual complementing of various forms of pension security protection.

Since January 1, 2000 a new normative order has been in effect in Bulgaria. This has laid the foundation for the contemporary multi-pillar model of pension security protection as a concept designed and constructed in the spirit of good European practice and at the same time distinguished by a number of national peculiarities.

The world financial crisis, which erupted at the beginning of 2008, will inevitably have an impact on the functioning and development of the Bulgarian pension security system. At this stage it is extremely difficult to produce empirical data on the value dimensions of the contingent adverse ramifications that have a direct or an indirect effect as well as an immediate or delayed impact (though their expected trends can be outlined).

Key words: pension security, multi-pillar model, public pension security, supplementary pension security.

1. Introduction

Pension security represents that portion of differentiated social security set aside with a view to providing protection in the form of payments intended to compensate for the adverse repercussions following the onset of a state of lasting unemployment caused by the manifestation of labor risks. Its economic nature finds its expression in the diversity of distributive and re-distributive relations in the process of the forming and distributing of the security fund in the light of desired security and the effective functioning of the economy.

Pension security as a branch of social security originated as a result of the continual development, alteration and improvement of the organizational forms of support for incapacitated individuals. At the same time, pension security — being relatively independent as a system-forming component of social security as a whole — is the subject of an uninterrupted development and improvement in line with objective social needs, expectations and dispositions.

The current dimensions of socio-economic development necessitate the multi-pillar/multi-stratum model of pension security, which guarantees the simultaneous existence, coordination and mutual complementing of forms¹ of pension security protection as follows:

• Abiding by the general template of providing security protection — establishment and subsequent distribution of a differentiated fund while observing the principle of counter payments and the right to make claims;

• Being diverse in view of the number of individual parts involved in realizing pension security protection. The initiatives for implementing the forms of pension security protection in line with this diversity are: public, company-based and private. They also include the underlying principle, compulsory and voluntary character, and its derivatives: the manner of financing/covering costs or capital, scope as to pre persons and risks, organization of payments, etc;

• Finding feasibility and concretization through the variety of pension schemes;

• Oriented toward ensuring a normal level² of satisfying the needs of individuals entering retirement.

Plamen Yordanov: “D.A.Tseenov” Academy of Economics in Svishtov, Bulgaria. E-mail: jordanov@uni-svishtov.bg .
About the Author: Dr. Plamen Yordanov is a Chief assistant at the Department of Insurance and Social security, “D.A.Tseenov” Academy of Economics in Svishtov, Bulgaria. He holds a Ph.D. from the same Institution (2005). His main research interests and publications are in Social security, Pension systems and related matters. Dr. Yordanov is an academic lecturer in “Labor Economics”, “Theory of Social Security”, “Social Security Accounting”, “Analysis and Controlling of Social Security” and “Social Security of Farmers”.
1 We consider the concept of ‘forms’ of security protection as a way of generalizing on the activities guaranteeing protection against the adverse ramifications of the manifestations of the risks, grouped according to their definite features, for example, initiatives for carrying them out, involvement in setting up people’s incomes at retirement, underlying principle, etc… See Georgiev, Zdr., Pl. Yordanov, Theory of Social Security, Svishtov, 2001, p. 97 on.
2 In this respect it is recommended that the compensation level of final incomes be between 70% and 90% given the flexible involvement of the various forms of pension security protection — between 40% and 50% coming from public protection, between 10% and 20% from the company-based one, and between 15% and 20% from the private one. In different countries the relationships between the above-mentioned forms of pension security protection as sources of income vary when persons are pensioned off — for example, in Germany the relation is 85/5/10%, in Great Britain it is 65/25/10%, in the Netherlands 50/40/%, in Switzerland 42/32/26%. See Bero Roos, Der Aktuar in der betrieblichen Altersversorgung, Seminar ueber Verrsicherungsmathematik — Universitaet Hamburg, Februar, 2002, S. 8; Betriebliche Altersversorgung /Konpendium/, Verbund Selbstaendiger Finanzdienstleister, S. I u.a.

Over the last fifteen years the welfare state has undergone an undeniable process of policy and institutional change. Confronting the empirical evidence of an unexpected political commitment to unpopular socio-economic reforms, the influential interpretation of welfare institutions as immovable objects or frozen landscapes revealed itself to be an oversimplification (Arza and Kohli, 2007). The role of societal and technological change has been newly recognized as a source of challenge and policy crisis, thus an engine of change (Esping Andersen et al., 2002). The notion of crisis (or challenge), however, has also evolved. The stagflation pressure of the Seventies, the ‘big government’ worries of the Eighties and the globalization debate of the early Nineties all framed crisis as a constraint on public expenditure and a challenge to national politico-economic sovereignty and social citizenship (Castles, 2004). Conversely, throughout the Nineties, the old drivers of expansion themselves have been reframed as a new kind of crisis, under the budgetary constraints of unanimously recognized ‘hard times’. As population ageing (World Bank, 1994) persistently pushes social expenditure against the old social risks of the former core labour force, the growth of the third sector and rising female employment create urgency for a new set of social protections (Myles and Quadagno, 2002; Bonoli, 2005).

While both convergence and pure retrenchment failed to materialize, the distributional consequences and the political endorsement of the process of so called ‘recalibration’ (Ferrera et al., 2000) have let down the dominant reading of a ‘new politics’ of the welfare state and its expectations of stability and policy making by stealth (Pierson, 1998). Reforms have forced different welfare regimes, states and programs to adapt in unique ways to the new challenges and policy trade offs. Even in the toughest scenarios, a combination of rationalization of outlays and re-commodification of the labour force extended coverage to new and traditionally unprotected social groups (Arza and Kohli, 2007).

These elements of complexity call new attention to what was once called ‘the possibility of politics’ (Ringen, 1987). Since social policies are entwined in complex interactions and trade offs between production, distribution and redistribution, reformers are able to push forward their preferred outcomes, purposely circumventing some of the organizational and institutional constraints that their operative context imposes on their opportunities structure (Hacker, 2004; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). The orthodox reading of institutional stability is thus charged with underestimating the fact that, even if singular policies can manifest increasing political and cognitive returns, their interaction can create self-undermining vicious cycles (Crouch and Farrel, 2002). In the real world of reforms, the choice to address multi-dimensional policy linkages may even increase the sustainability of unpopular interventions.

This paper attempts to analyze a similar multi-dimensional reform pattern, comparing the sequences of labour market and pension reforms enacted in Denmark and Italy between 1992 and 2007. The two reform pathways both focused on the link between retirement and labour market policies and fostered a shift from a paradigm based on early exit from the labour market and generous retirement conditions to a new one based on active ageing and fair pension treatments. In particular, I am interested in the common effort to phase out early retirement and in the evolution of a multi pillar pension system in the two countries. The puzzling question here is not why policy has changed or why there is some form (or some lack) of convergence. Denmark and Italy were, and still are, one of the most heterogeneous possible pairings among European countries. Rather, my question is why some specific reform patterns or dynamics have emerged. Following the logic of a most-different systems design to maximize the variance of possible intervening factors, I will look for common but independent factors capable of explaining the common effort:

• to reduce the scope and attractiveness of institutionalized pattern to early retirement and

• to establish or (in the case of Denmark) to improve a multi-pillar pension system.

In the first section I will provide the general rationale of the research. The second and the third paragraphs offer an empirical account of the reform process in both countries, while the fourth concludes with three tentative generalizations.

2. Denmark and Italy from Challenges to Reactions

Having been two countries in crisis at the end of the Eighties, both enacted major socio-economic reforms over the last fifteen years. Denmark introduced the most celebrated policy paradigm of the last decade: the flexicurity model. Italy, in its turn, pioneered the last wave of pension reform in Europe, adopting a ‘Swedish’ NDC contribution formula in 1995.

At first sight, similar changes were somewhat unlikely in both countries. One reason is that Italy and Denmark were expected to handle their institutional complementarities by improving their institutional coherence in the direction of greater coordination (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Ebbinghaus, 2006). Instead, the outcomes of the reforms in the two countries indicate a further hybridization in terms of a shift towards more liberal solutions, with particular reference to the Danish flexicurity (Campbell and Pedersen, 2007) and the relaxing of the public monopoly over pensions in Italy (Ferrera and Jessoula, 2006). Furthermore, both the phasing out of early retirement and the revision of the structural configuration of their pension systems are visible and sensible interventions on very popular and strongly institutionalized features of their political economy. As a consequence it is deemed unlikely that they will take place according to an orthodox reading of institutional path dependency (Pierson, 2001).

A better explanation can be found by analyzing the interaction between the challenges faced by the two countries and the intervening effect on political agency and policy legacies at the national level. This is particularly the case for early retirement and for the introduction of a multi-pillar pension system. The institutionalization of the former is traditionally considered a case of institutional bricolage and of a creative reinterpretation of the existing schemes (introduced with a different mission) (Kohli et al., 1991). The latter, in its turn, is intimately linked to the interaction between the state and the market (and the financial market) in the provision of welfare (Bonoli, 2003). There is no single factor that can explain how the various links between the labour market and the different retirement routes can or should be crossed. Challenges and crises, as direct causes of policy change, only exist in interaction with a more complex structure of self-sustaining but also contradictory and unstable institutional settings. Reinterpreting the notion of institutional complementarities, the emerging post-determinist (Crouch, 2007) branch of neo-institutionalism has precisely underlined how ambivalent is the effect of existing policy linkages on the stability of the whole regime and of its components (programs) (Campbell, 2004; Hacker, 2004). The opportunity to correct multidimensional problems acting on different fronts, while providing broader compensations and concessions, can unleash the potential of new coalitional dynamics and argumentative strategies, lead to more plausible problem solving efforts and improve the commitment to reform. Consequently, political entrepreneurship strongly influences this phase of re-consolidation (Campbell, 2004; Natali, 2008).

Furio Stamati: Istituto Universitario Europeo, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Via dei Roccettini 9, San Domenico di Fiesole, 50014 Firenze. Please e-mail comments to: Furio.Stamati@eui.eu

]]> http://eng.newwelfare.org/2009/10/10/italy-and-denmark-from-early-retirement-to-active-ageing-problems-and-solutions-for-structural-unemployment-and-pension-funding/feed/ 0 http://eng.newwelfare.org/2009/10/10/the-labour-market-for-older-workers-in-sweden-changes-and-prospects/ http://eng.newwelfare.org/2009/10/10/the-labour-market-for-older-workers-in-sweden-changes-and-prospects/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:17:13 +0000 Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist and Eskil Wadensjö http://eng.newwelfare.org/?p=593 1. The Demographic Development

In most developed countries the share of the population of active age is declining. The share above active age is increasing due to low fertility and the fact that people are living longer. The part of a cohort living to the age of 65 increases and those who reach that age live longer beyond that. Statistics Sweden has produced a forecast which indicates that the number of older people for each person of active age will increase from c. 0.3 in 2004 to more than 0.5 in 2030. The number of young people (below active age) per person of active age will remain at the same level, c. 0.5.

An ageing population means increased public sector expenses for health, old age care and pensions. If one does not want to raise the tax rates, lower pensions or lower the quality of health care, old age care or other public sector programs, the total number of hours worked in the economy has to increase. An increased number of hours worked means higher tax revenues at given rates.

The labour supply may increase in several different ways which complement each other. The most important ones are: 1) an increase in the number of hours worked by those who are employed; for example a number of those working part-time might switch to full-time, 2) a more rapid move from school to work; this transition now takes several years for many people, 3) a higher employment rate for groups who presently have low employment rates such as people with disabilities and refugees, 4) increased labour immigration, and 5) a higher retirement age. We will discuss the last of these five options here.

An argument for trying to raise the age for leaving the labour market with a pension is that the number of years with a pension increases if the pension age is not changed. The health of older people has gradually improved, older people more often have higher education and fewer have physically demanding jobs. These factors all argue for continued work to an older age.

One way of illustrating this is to study the remaining life expectancy for those who reach the age of 65. Table 1 shows the development up to 2007 and a forecast for future development. The starting point is the expected remaining life span for those aged 65 in 1971-1980, the decade in which the retirement age was lowered from 67 to 65 in the social security old age pension scheme. We calculate what the pension age would have been if the expected number of years after being pensioned had been the same as in the 1970s when it was 65. The calculation shows that it should have increased by 3-4 years up till now and should increase by one year more by 2020.

Table 1: Expected remaining life expectancy at 65 years of age and pension age if there is the same expected number of years with a pension as in the 1970s

Note: The prediction for 2008-2020 was made by Statistics Sweden before the values for 2007 were known. This explains why the value for 2008 is lower than for 2007. We have set the value for the pension age in the 1970s to 65; the pension age from 1976 on.
Source: Statistics Sweden, Population statistics and own calculations based on that.

2. Labour Force Participation among People of Older Active Age in Sweden

For many years labour force participation and employment declined among older people in Sweden and in other countries. Part of this may be explained by a lowering of the age for a full pension from the social security pension schemes and by higher pensions. But the exit from the labour market also increased in the age groups below the normal pension age — early exit became common. The decline in employment in this age group (older active age) is closely related to the business cycle development and to the possibilities of getting an income transfer before the normal pension age. More people lose their jobs in downturns of the economy and many countries introduced favourable forms of economic support for those who left early.

In Sweden this development was not as pronounced as in many other countries. Sweden belongs to a small group of countries with a relatively high age for exiting the labour market. The development towards a lower real retirement age (and in not a few cases a lower formal retirement age) ended in the mid-1990s in most countries including Sweden, partly as a result of a policy shift. In many countries the lowest possible age for a full or reduced pension was raised, different early exit roads were blocked or made less favourable. The result was also a higher average age when leaving the labour market for retirement. It is important to distinguish between receiving a pension and discontinuing working. In many pension systems (but not in all) it is possible to have an old age pension and continue to work and it is also possible to stop working and wait to take up a pension (and in many cases get an income transfer other than an old age pension). In Sweden the average age when leaving the labour market is at present two years lower than the average age for starting to take up an old age pension, which is close to 65.

Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University and REASSESS, NOVA.
Eskil Wadensjö: Swedish Institute for Social Research and SULCIS, both Stockholm University & REASSESS, NOVA.

For over twenty years demographic research has revealed that the more economically developed countries are witnessing a new demographic phase, known as “second demographic transition”. Among the principal implications of this is the change in the age structure of the population with a growth in numbers among the older age groups. The increase in average life expectancy and particularly the lengthening of the period of life in good health and in complete autonomy, have profound implications for social organisation. Among these, research has revealed a redefinition of social times and of the roles linked to age. Picking up on Peter Laslett’s well known thesis (1989), from the lengthening of the average life in good health emerges a ‘new life map’ in which, limiting ourselves to the older ages, new life times are revealed which fall between the ending of productive roles (in the labour market) and the reproductive ones (in the family and domestic sphere) of middle age and the final loss of personal autonomy. We are dealing with new social times, in which one observed the contemporaneous destabilising of end of career paths and the redefinition of transition mechanisms towards retirement with wide margins of uncertainty on roles, identities and processes of social recognition. In the third age complex social innovation processes are experienced, which revolve around the redefinition of the mechanisms which govern the transition from work to retirement, from active life to retired life.

The widest and most discussed debate on this subject, however has been about the economic consequences of demographic transition, focusing attention on the mid to long term sustainability of the welfare system. In this regard Giovanni Battista Sgritta speaks of an ‘unnoticed revolution’ underlying the demographic transition, maintaining that “any alteration to the structure by population age is bound to reflect on the system of rules that determines the possibility of acting, exchanging, participating in political life, protecting one’s own interest and relationships within the family (…). Demographic ageing has introduced a deep ‘asymmetry’ between age distribution and the symbolic and regulatory framework which till then had governed the relationships of exchange and solidarity between age groups” (1993: 24), thus necessitating a general reorganisation of welfare mechanisms, and in particular a reform of the welfare system.

In the case of Italy, since the early 1990s there has been a long and articulated process of reform of the public welfare system¹ in line with European Union guidelines. The main objectives of this reform have been to delay the time of retirement, both by raising the minimum criteria for obtaining the pension and by reducing institutional early retirement options².

Pension reforms, most sensitive to the macroeconomic sustainability of public welfare, have adopted a reductionist approach to the subject of work and the employment of those advanced in years. In the labour market, indeed, there has not been a corresponding lengthening of working careers. In fact for some occupational groups most exposed to functional ageing and no longer safeguarded by welfare type protection new risks have emerged of social exclusion linked to involuntary early exit from the labour market no longer guaranteed by welfare type protection. When it comes to extending participation in the labour market in advanced years, generally speaking companies, the industrial relations system, the public bodies working in the active employment policies area, have often been unprepared for managing the ageing of the work force or dealing with the phenomenon of early exits from jobs.

To help face the challenges connected to demographic transition, particularly in governing a complex process of social innovation of welfare institutions and of labour market regulating, led by the European Union, an active ageing strategy has been adopted. This is based on a global approach to the ageing question, centred on the key notion of ‘activation’ (Barbier, 2005). Starting from the Council of Lisbon of 2000 and subsequently the creation of the renewed Lisbon Strategy of 2005, the notion of activation has been one of the directional pillars of the European Union’s economic and social policy. It directs governments towards policies to stimulate global increases in employment rates, with specific objectives for older workers. Active ageing, aimed at making the elderly active in the labour market, has developed an adaptive institutional approach with the objective of guaranteeing the health, independence and social productivity of individuals for as long as possible, retaining that, as Alan Walker writes, “active ageing could supply an important means of seeing to it that demography doesn’t become an obstacle to sustainable development, of preventing radical changes to social protection systems and of avoiding any generational conflict and preserving the European social model” (2005, p 1).

Within the active ageing strategy, moreover, there is a more coherent convergence between welfare system reforms and activation policies for people advanced in years. This is particularly the case when it comes to the development of the so-called ‘fourth pillar’ (Reday-Mulvey, 2007), i.e. the incentive for those advanced in years to work, in some cases having recourse to forms of part time work or non standard models of remuneration. In the public and scientific debate however, the analysis of the costs of ageing have dominated, while it has been only recently that new interpretations have been developing that view the third age as a new productive phase of life in the areas of economy or of socially useful activities. There is a place in this area of thought for the view of the healthy elderly person as a social resource and no longer as a cost.

The analysis of the relationship between age, work and participation in the labour market of people in advanced years, before or after crossing the retirement threshold, is crucial in the active ageing perspective. Our work comes within this perspective and, on the basis of several field studies³ it concentrates on the employment situation of the oldest workers in the Italian labour market. On this subject we consider the institutional regulatory mechanisms for the transition from employment to retirement (paragraph 2) and of company management of human resources practices in relation to age, with particular reference to the manufacturing sector (paragraph 3). The reference framework having been determined, possible strategies for the activation, in the Italian labour market, of individuals over fifty who have lost their jobs, or who are inactive and on the slippery road to retirement are analysed (paragraphs 4,5 and 6). To these are added some brief considerations, presented at the conclusion of the article.

2. Ageing and Employment for the Oldest Workers in Italy

Demographic ageing in Italy has come about faster and more intensely than in other European countries. In the last twenty years between 1988 and 2008, the percentage incidence of people of 50 years and over has risen from 32% to 39% of the total population, a growth that especially concerned the over 65s. Comparing the Italian data with those of the EuroArea-15⁴, we find that in Italy the incidence of over 50s was greater at the beginning of the period in question, (32% compared to 30.8%) and then increased faster than in the other countries over the following twenty years (+21% compared to +18%). If initially this phenomenon was attributed to a large extent to the reduction in the birth rate, most recent trends demonstrate that it is instead, the increase in average life expectancy that determines the growth in the proportion of the older age groups relative to the total population (Baldi and Cagiano de Azevedo, 2005). In the coming decades this phenomenon will be even more noticeable, as official Istat demographic projections reveal. From these it emerges that the percentage incidence of people aged 50 and over will be about 40% in 2010 and will account for half the population in 2050⁵.

With regard to these demographic trends, despite an inversion over recent years, the main labour market indicators reveal, a low level of employment among the older age groups, once more strongly indicating a situation that has been defined the “paradox of functional ageing in demographically elderly societies” (Carrera, Mirabile, 2000: 14). Looking at the available statistical information, from the Eurostat data⁶ it can be seen that in 2007 the employment rate in Italy in the 55-64 age group was 33.8%, a much lower rate than the European average whether one considers the EuroArea-15 (46.5%, or that of the enlarged European Union of 27 (44.7%). These data represent a critical situation, especially when account is also taken of the fact that the European Commission at the Stockholm European Council of 2001, had set the objective of achieving an employment rate for the 55-64 age group of 50% or over by 2010. Looking back and comparing the employment rate in 2007, with that recorded ten years earlier in 1997 however, a growth from 28% to 33.8% is revealed, an increase greater than that recorded for the entire population aged 15 and over (which rose from 41.7% to 45.9%). At the same time, however, the employment rate for those over 65 years went down slightly, from 3.8% to 3.2%.

Going back to the 2007 data (Istat, 2009), in the 55-64 age group the non-active population represented fully 65% of the total (i.e. 4.6 million out of a 55-65 year old population of 7.1 million). Among the inactive the most important groups were firstly the one made up of individuals already retired, 47%, then the group of those who declared they “had no interest in work” accounting for 27%; 9% had health problems, and finally, the discouraged workers, (5%) i.e. those, who convinced they wouldn’t find work, had given up actively looking for a job. An analysis of the rate of unemployment shows it is very low, (2.4% but if one only adds the discouraged workers to those looking for work, the unemployment rate rises to 10.3%. To sum up, there are few employed people among the 55-64 year olds in Italy compared to the European average. This is due to the early exit from the labour market, firstly for early retirement⁷, secondly because of the great difficulty in finding work once over the 50 year threshold (if not before), and finally, to a lesser extent, because of people’s lack of motivation in relation to work.

This brief statistical picture shows that in Italy the phenomenon of early exit from the labour market persists, and particularly so for the number of people of advanced years who join the no-active population. Using the Political Economy of Ageing approach (Kohli, et al. 1991; Maltby, et al., 2004), some recent analyses (Mirabile et al., 2006) suggest that this is due to inertia on the part of the Italian economic and social system, when it comes to adopting an integrated approach to active ageing policies. While welfare reforms have aimed at delaying retirement, in the labour market there has been little in the way of developed support for the employment of the elderly. The social protection system and the negotiation practices of the unions, moreover, continue to deal with the passive defence of workers removed from employment early, despite the fact that this strategy is applicable to an increasingly small number of older workers from the great industrial corporations. Using the pattern prepared by Anne-Marie Guillemard (2003), one can see a shift in the Italian case, from an original model in which, while there were few active employment policies, there was a high level of protection against the risk of unemployment, to a new model marked by a weakness in both dimensions (Figure1).

Figure 1: Typologies of the trajectories on the labour market of elderly worker in terms of the relationship between labour policies and those relating to social protection

Source: Guillemard (2003: 74); Our elaboration.

Actually, looking at the last decade, with regard to active employment policies at national level, workers over 50 years of age who are out of work or about to lose it are considered ‘disadvantaged workers’ and therefore can take advantage of the insertion contract⁸, besides being protected against discriminatory practices⁹. When it comes to the decentralisation of employment policies and employment services, the framework is much more developed. However current research shows that at a regional level the subject of older workers generally has little specific place in planning documents, but rather can be found among measures concerning a wider public in the area of education and equal opportunities (Folini et al., 2004: Gilli e Marocco, 2006; Mirabile et al., 2005; 2006).

Concerning cover against the risk of unemployment, instead, until the mid 1990s, besides early retirement there was a whole range of institutional safeguarded pathways out of the labour market, created by means of the use of social safety valves and company incentives, usually aimed at the employees of large industrial corporations. In quantitative terms Istat records that in the second half of 2006, around 9% of retired workers had taken advantage of an incentive to take early retirement (Istat, 2007b). These strategies were made easy by a corporate industrial relations model, and by the preparedness of the public player to use economic resources and National Insurance contributions to support early exit from the labour market, guaranteeing a certain level of income, agreed with the unions. In the current phase, however, there is a crisis in these negotiation practices. There are at least three reasons for this: (a) the first linked to demographic trends: a slow down in turnover due to the dwindling number of young members of the work force entering the labour market; (b) the second concerns welfare restructuring: the reduction in institutional early pathways out of the labour market and the favouring of activation tools, rather than passive measures for guaranteeing income; (c) the third is linked to the evolution of occupation composition: the increase in older workers dismissed from small and medium companies where traditional forms of social protection covering the slide towards retirement are not applied.

The analysis shows that a rebalancing between social protection measures and those relating to activation in the labour market is called for, both to take account of people who cannot be activated and to allow the adjustment of active employment policies through the creation of a strategy specifically aimed at keeping people in the labour market despite advance in age. The active ageing approach requires also that there be strict coordination between the various policy areas otherwise — as Massimo Paci warns — “these interventions are destined to have poor results, if they do not form part of an integrated ensemble of policies that deal with problems relating to health, technology, business organisation, and in general, a culture on old age shared by workers, employers and unions.” (2005: 174). It is important therefore, that company and worker action strategies and existing conditioning in the various local action contexts be analysed — at the macroeconomic level.

3. Businesses and Older Workers in the Manufacturing Sector

The Italian industrial development model, even in the economic miracle years, was characterised by a marked selectivity in the choice of workers, with a preference for workers “in the flower of age” (De Cecco, 1971, Paci, 1973), usually masculine, who could adapt to high productivity industrial production systems. In this model retirement was the mechanism that safeguarded high levels of productivity from the risk of functional ageing on the part of the work force (Mingione, Pugliese, 2002), but it was also the expression of a Fordist social pact (Ambrosini, Ballarino, 2000) in which work and dedication to the company for one’s whole life were exchanged for employment stability and protection from a codified series of various social risks including reduction of earning capacity in old age.

This ‘pact’ went into crisis with the first industrial restructuring of the eighties, when as a result of the drastic reduction in manufacturing employment a considerable number of employees, more or less near the retirement threshold, were pushed out of the labour market through the adoption of various retirement schemes or by means of a protected shift towards retirement. During these years businesses developed workforce rejuvenating strategies using the young in/old out pattern (Contini, Rapiti, 1994) that only partly went into crisis as a result of the welfare system reforms from the early nineties till the present. Selectivity on the part of businesses has been increased, moreover, with the de-regularisation of the labour market over the last decade¹⁰. Businesses have been more easily able to adopt a human resource management model based on the centro-periphery pattern (Harvey, 1997; Dore, 2005), which has resulted in the ‘fragilisation’ of older workers (Gallino, 2001). Particularly where there is a structural excessive labour force, de-regularisation of the labour market allows businesses to choose components that are most productive, economic and adaptable to the company needs. As a result there is an increase in the ‘peripheral’ aspect in the labour market, with the consequence, on the one hand, of further increasing the vulnerability of traditionally disadvantaged groups, and on the other, of the removal of new groups of workers from the strong “nucleus”, among them the oldest unskilled ones who are always the least safeguarded by the social protection system (Castel, 1997).

Within this general framework, one can find some notable differences in the management of the oldest workers and of the relationship between ageing and work (Molina, 2000). The first difference concerns the speed of technological change in the production sector and in companies. The status of the elderly worker, is actually inversely proportionate to the speed of technological and organisational change in his company. This means that where the change is faster, turnover accelerates and the oldest workers tend to run greater risks of removal from the company; where, instead, the technological and organisational change is slower, more account is taken of the elderly worker since his on the job experience is of greater productive value. In the sectors marked by periodic changes in their technological paradigm, businesses often prefer to get new competences from the market rather than change those within, through the counter-ageing of human resources (Biagioli, et al., 2004). This particularly penalises the oldest workers for whom the cost/benefit ratio of training reduces company expectations on the duration of the working cycle of the oldest employee, in whom it is hardly convenient for the company to invest further resources. Moreover, in the current Italian labour market legislative framework the generation changeover guarantees the company a reduction in the total work costs, greater flexibility when it comes to contracts, and more generally, a reduction in the level of unionisation. The second difference concerns the direct relationship between economic circumstances (general and sector related), and the early dismissal of the elderly, since during negative phases of the economic cycle businesses tend to reduce to zero the peripheral components of human resources including the oldest workers.

In brief the analysis shows that the presence of older workers in the labour market is hindered by glaring recruitment selectivity in the manufacturing sector that produces a marginalisation of workers advanced in years, and also an acceleration in company turnover. Workers with superior professional profiles are less exposed to early exit from the labour market, as is suggested by the employment levels based on educational qualifications¹¹, or of those in productive contexts where on the job experience is beneficial to the competitiveness of the company. From the workers’ point of view early exit from the labour market is mainly a hetero-direct choice, determined by the demand for labour. Within the available margins of freedom workers have developed various adaptive strategies with two common objectives: the first is to maximise pension income, including voluntarily leaving work early in order to benefit from favourable welfare provisions. The second, more general, is that of matching the time and manner of one’s final exit from the labour market for retirement to the balancing of working time and non-working time according to one’s personal preferences.

During the first industrial restructuring, the margins of individual autonomy and collective bargaining on the processes for early exit were such as to better guarantee both objectives. However, from the middle of the nineties on, early exit was increasingly involuntary and, as a result of the crisis, marked by the individual and collective impossibility of influencing the time and manner of the transition from employment to retirement as seen in the preceding paragraph. Faced with the overall re-dimensioning of safeguards linked to employment, in an active ageing perspective the system suffers from the difficulty the public player has in determining labour market regulatory mechanisms capable of guaranteeing the participation and employment of those advanced in years.

From research experience and literature on the subject (Accorini, Gagliardi, 2007) and given the current regulatory framework it is possible to draw some action lines for determining a many faceted strategy for activating older workers dismissed too early from the labour market, in accordance with the analytical pattern discussed in the following three paragraphs. This pin points (a) the typology of the workers targeted by activation policies based on basic education, on the level of professionalism and on orientation towards work; (b) the orientation of the labour market considering companies’ selective strategies; and (c) the policy options of the public player, taking account of the organisation of employment services and of already existing activation measures or ones that could be obtained through their re-orientation.

Francesco Pirone:  Department of Sociology and Political Science, Salerno Uiversity of Studies, fpirone@unisa.it
1 Reference is made to the public welfare system reforms contained in legislative decree 503/92 (Amato Reform), l. 335/95 (Dini Reform), l. 449/97 (Prodi Reform) and in the most recent l. 234/2004 (Berlusconi Reform).
2 Italy has followed a welfare reform model similar to that adopted by most continental European countries based on joint penalty and incentive action. On one hand the minimum conditions for taking retirement have been tightened, and on the other, with the introduction of the contribution system pension income for those who leave the labour market early has been reduced. Less use has been made of gradual retirement schemes using a mix of part time work and pension (Mirabile et al., 2006).
3 We are referring here to research carried out in various parts of the country, but mainly concentrated on the manufacturing sector: Pirone (2006), Pugliese, Morlicchio and Pirone (2007).
4 The EuroArea 15 includes the following countries: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxemburg, Malta, The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Finland.
5 Our elaboration on the Eurostat data, Population forecasts (2007-2051, .
6 Our elaboration on Eurostat data, Labour Force Survey, epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu.
7 In many cases these are people who started their contributory career early and who have benefited from seniority pensions.
8 A provision of Legislative Decree 276 of 10 September 2003 enacted on the basis of regulation EC nr. 2204/2002.
9 This refers in particular to the rules in Legislative Decree 216, 9 July 2003, implementing directive nr. 2000/78/CE.
10 Reference is made specifically to law nr. 196/197 and law nr. 20/2003 and implementing decree nr. 276/2003.
11 In the 55-64 age group in Italy, for 2007 the employment rate was 66% among those with university qualifications, 50% for those with diplomas, 31% for those with lower middle school qualifications and 20% for those with primary school certificates. Over 65 years of age the employment rate is 17% among those with university qualifications, going down to 7% for those with diplomas, and well under 5% for those with less than diploma level qualifications (Istat, 2009).

The increase in the length of life represents one of the great challenges for contemporary society. It will reshape the structure and demographic profile of the generational system and of our society as a whole, with consequences for the social and economic system.

The present paper focuses on the idea that the elderly today must be considered an area of heterogeneous population and on the affirmation that many of them manifest the ability and the will to continue to learn in order to remain active.

In particular the elderly have the desire to develop knowledge and skills that can help them improve the quality of their lives, make constructive use of their free time and be seen as capable of contributing to the communities to which they belong. a few studies (Risi, 2007) have reported an increase in the ‘demand’ for courses on the use of the computer and the Internet, given the importance of these technologies in today’s society.

From the planning point of view this implies the need for a rethinking of social policies regarding training activities. State intervention to create activities which support the passage from employment to retirement and which view aging as an active resource still appear half-hearted. The Universities of the Third Age, as substitutes for companies as meeting places (Rossi, 2002), occupy a relevant place in so-called lifelong learning, alongside and complementing public initiatives taking place across the country. Besides theoretical consideration this paper will also describe a quantitative and qualitative mapping (fruit of an exploratory study) of the training initiatives promoted by local public authorities and of the courses offered by the Universities of the Third Age, specifically aimed at making the elderly familiar with the new technologies and their use.

2. From Stereotype to Heterogeneity: An Economic, Cultural and Social Challenge

The way in which governments and economic agencies observe and manage the effects of the increasing length of life process, through the ad hoc creation of instruments, is becoming increasingly relevant. Concerns over social policies on the part of the governments of the industrialised countries are often characterised by fears of their ‘negative’ effects in terms of public spending, taking their eyes off the importance of linking financial sustainability to greater opportunities for employment and social participation for the older population.

In the cultural imagination, in fact, the elderly condition is associated with the idea of a general process of decay, deriving from a progressive loss of both psycho-physical and social and productive ability to function. The characteristics most often attributed to the elderly are weakness and disengagement based on the fact that the onset of the separation of old age from adult age is anchored in the subject’s exit from the productive system. It is a case of a stereotypical and typically ‘modern’ image, attributable to the development of the industrial society and its key values (Cesa-Bianchi, 2003), being no longer appropriate in the current economy based mainly on the service industry.

It is important to recognise that in our culture there are processes which are correlated with the stages in a person’s life: one can be ‘too young’ or ‘too old’ (to drive, to marry, to learn…) to take on determined roles and to take advantage of certain opportunities.

Anglo-Saxons often use the term ageism to refer to discrimination exercised by one or more age groups in relation to other groups. In the West the elderly are considered to have the lowest place of any adult group in our society. Although there is still difficulty in overcoming the arbitrary production oriented-industrial based division of the population into age segments, the ‘monolithic’ identity of the elderly condition has, in recent decades, been called into question in favor of explanatory models, which appear more appropriate. The overall transformations which have characterised the various spheres of society, following a logic of growing complexity of social life contribute to determining a variety of aging pathways. The fragmentation and dynamicity of a number of cultural, institutional and economic factors have favoured the coexistence of aspects of life which permit even individuals in advanced age to occupy different social roles contemporaneously, making the very boundaries of the “elderly generations very blurred and difficult to determine. The elderly condition therefore, becomes a composite in which, not so much different cohorts, but rather different generational profiles, in the true sense, exist together” (Facchini and Rampazi, 2006).

The word ‘elderly’ can no longer have a single meaning: For this reason other terms have been sought, such as the third or fourth age, the golden age or the seniors’ age. The WHO (World Health Organisation) has suggested subdivisions of young-old for those aged 65 to 74; old-old, referring to those from 75 to 90 years; very-old, for the over 90s.

Considering the elderly population as an indistinct and stereotyped group has resulted in their being seen as incapable of learning and of adapting to a world that is evolving. But while a part of this social group may fit this image, there is another part, made up of people who, while age may make them less physically strong, are intellectually able and willing. While until a decade or so ago the elderly were those who had survived the experience of the first and second World Wars, today’s elderly are not only more numerous¹, but have a completely different life experience. Generally speaking they have a stronger cultural education together with an aptitude for analysing the surrounding reality, the ability to interact with it and with basic knowledge of technological products resulting from years of using television, wellbeing and stabilised consumption.

Such observations have led to the use of the term counter-ageing which in Italian is translated as svecchiamento and which scholars (Giarini, 2000) use to indicate the increased potential capabilities (physical and intellectual) in terms of human capital.

Taking account of the increase in the capacity to be active and in better health, compared to the same age groups of the past, scholars in several disciplines in Italy have begun to talk of ‘new elderly’ (see among others Bosio, 1992; Olivero, 2000; Allario, 2003; Tramma, 2000, 2003) in order to emphasise how different are individuals who, live the last years of life in a way that is far from the the still widespread stereotype of the elderly.

The characteristics of this new ‘elderliness’ are still not completely clear or stated with precision. It is a phenomenon in evolution which appeared during the last century and which is being confirmed today. The new elderly is a very diversified part of the population, with experiences influenced by the intertwining of life pathways and careers, and by the demands and needs of the preceding years (Tramma S., 2003).

It has been shown that there exists, among these people, a demand for knowledge, even where there is a shortage of planned offers of education. These types of demand, explicit or latent, vary both as to content and to the underlying motivation for participation in training. While the old-old are characterised by rather modest culture demands and by a limited involvement in social networks, the young-old, on the contrary show a greater interest in new knowledges and a consistent social involvement (Facchini, ed. 2003), The ‘current’ generation of fifty-sixty year olds for example, is one of the last, at least in Italy, who have had a poorer educational experience than they would have liked, due to economic and family constraints. These individuals on the one hand would have the basic competences and knowledge supplied by compulsory schooling that enable them to relate positively to more complex education, while on the other hand they also possess interests which were not completely satisfied when they were younger (ibid).

A part of Italy’s population considered old, with characteristics which are only partly socio-demographic, has, on the whole, an interested and open minded attitude, with a will to experience current society’s innovations, showing the capacity and will to learn new ‘things’ both those which improve the quality of their lives and those which help them make constructive use of their free time. The more skills and knowledge the elderly feel they have, in fact, the more they can contribute to the development of their communities. This leads to the need to discover what role the elderly play in today’s society: an ‘ageing’ as a time of reorienting oneself, without trying to appear youthful at all costs (Scortegagna, 1999).

“Living isn’t living if one’s days are not nourished by passion and curiosity. Communication, migrations and trade have disseminated the culture of permanent education² in many cases turning it into a legend and myth. (…) But learning has long been a socially evident synonym for not being completely out of touch” (Demetrio D., Introduction, in Tramma, 2000). The lengthening of active life, therefore, can constitute an opportunity for today’s society, if changes in the welfare system are directed to dealing with future challenges, and offer education programmes and opportunities for making the most of third age human and social capital.

Elisabetta Risi: Research Doctor on the Information Society. Researcher with the Fondazione Università IULM of Milan, via Carlo Bo, 1 – 20143 Milan, telephone: 02.891412729 – 349.104 7006. E-mail: elisabetta.risi@iulm.it .
1 The literature (Micheli,2003; Tramma, 2003; Cavalli, 2005) refers to these subjects defining them as Baby Boomers.
2 An interesting approach to the processes of lifelong learning is found in Malizza and Gheorghiu (2006).

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