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The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of why people are still retiring earlier than would have been expected, despite policies that increase the retirement age. This is a qualitative study in a large public-service organisation in Sweden focusing particularly on how human resource routines aimed at middle management tend to inhibit the promotion of a prolonged working life, despite government efforts aimed at changing these actions. The results highlight three key routines (development talks, salary talks and internal recruitment) that inhibit prolonged working life. These routines seem rational and appropriate to the organisation's managers, because the demands of the job must have priority over employees' capabilities in recruitment routines. Furthermore, it could be considered economically rational to prioritise salary demands of younger employees over those of older employees, and it may appear economically rational to stop further training efforts for older employees. In general, then, it seems reasonable to managers to make decisions based on objective criteria like age. Nevertheless, our results suggest that these routines may need to be redesigned in order to support a prolonged working life and to avoid a discrepancy between accepted prolonged working-life policies and the actions of organisational actors. The study further reveals how intra-organisational institutions (e.g. taken-for-granted mind-sets and norms) embedded in human resource routines may promote or inhibit prolonged working life, suggesting a need for change in those institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines immigrant poverty at an older age in Sweden with an emphasis on late-in-life immigrants. We analyse tax data for the entire Swedish-born and non-Swedish-born population. The poverty status of a household is assessed using two criteria. First, the disposable income of the household in which the person lived in 2007 must be below 60 per cent of the median equivalent income in Sweden as a whole. Second, to be classified as 'twice poor' a household's net assets must be below SEK 10,000. The results indicate that three out of four Swedish-born older persons were not classified as poor by either of the criteria, and only 1 per cent by both criteria. In contrast, among older persons born in low-income countries almost three out of four were classified as poor according to one of the criteria and not fewer than one in three according to both. Results of estimating logistic models indicate that the risk of being considered poor according to both criteria is strongly positively related to one's age at immigration. Our results indicate that it is crucial that migrants, particularly those who arrive after age 40, be better integrated into the Swedish labour market. To alleviate poverty among those migrants who are already of older age, increased transfers are probably the only possible alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research is conducted to evaluate digital-based solutions for health-care services, but little is known about how such evaluations acknowledge diversity in later life. This study helps fill this gap and analyses participation in the evaluation of a web-based mobile phone system for monitoring the post-operative progress of patients after day surgery. Participation is conceptualised as resulting from three processes: pre-screening, recruitment and self-selection. Based on field information and survey data, this study models (a) the (non-)participation in a sample of 498 individuals aged 60 and older that includes non-screened, non-recruited, decliners and participants in the evaluation, and (b) the individual decision to participate in a sample of 210 individuals aged 60 and older who were invited to take part in the evaluation. Increasing age enhances the likelihood of not being screened, not being recruited or declining the invitation. Those not recruited were most often ineligible because of technology-related barriers. Decliners and participants differed by age, gender, job, health status, digital skills, but not by social participation. Results suggest that highly specific groups of older people are more likely to be involved than others. Old-age diversity is not properly represented in digital health research, with implications for the inclusivity of new digital health technologies. This has implications for increased risks of old-age exclusion and exacerbation of social and digital inequalities in ageing societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the conditions for extended working life from an organising perspective. Based on the idea that temporality makes up a fundamental organising dimension, it discusses conceptions of internal job mobility, and if and when employees are expected to relocate to a different unit at work. The material consists of interviews with 11 men between the ages of 56 and 74, working in manual and managerial capacities at a foundry of a Swedish branch of a large international steel company. The results show that internal work mobility is regulated by normative assumptions of mobility in terms of on- and off-time. This socio-temporal order constructs younger age groups as the age normality while designating the older employees' transitions as a normative breach. It is also shown that the temporal order constitutes a disciplining element steering employees from an early stage to plan for limitations that may arise as a result of ageism and/or physical changes. The result confirms that transition to less-physically demanding tasks is a prerequisite for continuing working in a physically demanding job. These transitions are not, however, included in the socio-temporal order of the company, but are presented as the older employees' individual problem. All together, these results show the need to introduce organisational practices and corporate strategies in the debate on extended working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the prospective increase in the numbers of older adults in Europe and of conflicting findings regarding recent disability trends, the present study uses cross-sectional data from four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), covering the period 2004–2013, and aims at the assessment of trends in disability by sex and broad age group (50–64 and 65 and over) for the ten countries participating in all waves, based on four different measures: limitations in activities of daily living (ADLs), limitations in instrumental ADLs, mobility difficulties and the Global Activity Limitation Indicator. The analysis uses logistic regression models adjusted for age and, subsequently, also for chronic conditions. The findings indicate improvements both in mild/moderate activity restrictions and in functional limitations for several countries, especially among men and women aged 65 and over. Regarding severe disability (ADLs) there is mostly a lack of any significant trend and only a few declines. In several instances, the observed trends are linked to changes in chronic conditions; significant improvements net of chronic conditions are found mainly in Sweden but also in the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Italy and France. Overall, the estimated trends often differentiate by country, age group and sex while they depend upon the specificities of the measures used in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many couples want to retire together even if spouses differ in age. Drawing on theories of leisure complementarity, gender roles and social status, this article uses comprehensive Swedish register data from 2002 to 2010 to explore synchronised retirement and its association with spousal age differences and other socio-demographic factors. Synchronisation rates in dual-earner couples (N = 83,986) were 10 per cent for retirement the same calendar year and 25 per cent for retirement the same or the following year. Contrary to theoretical expectations, synchronisation was more common in women-older couples than in men-older couples, although this was largely a consequence of the skewed distribution of age differences. Moreover, spouses' education, incomes, assets, employment and health were differently associated with synchronisation in same-age, men-older and women-older couples. In the total population, average retirement age differed very little between synchronising couples and other couples. Yet women who synchronised retired at an earlier age than other women, whereas men who synchronised retired later than other men. This was partly an effect of the predominance of men-older couples, but men in men-older couples were also more likely than women in women-older couples to delay retirement in order to synchronise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]