Career arduousness and [healthy] life expectancy in Europe

Join us for a Brown Bag Lunch Seminar presented by Prof. Vincent Vandenberghe from the Economics School of Louvain at UCLouvain in Belgium.

The primary policy response to population ageing has been to raise the statutory retirement age. This has reignited fierce debates over whether retirement ages should vary to reflect differences in the arduousness of work across careers. In this research, we empirically assess both the relevance and the feasibility of such differentiation using European microdata.

We construct a measure of career arduousness by combining four-digit ISCO occupational histories from SHARE Wave 7 with working-conditions data from the U.S. O*NET database, thereby creating an occupation-based index of physical job demands over the life course. Using SHARE follow-up data on health deterioration and mortality, we estimate life expectancy and healthy life expectancy by decile of career arduousness, integrating econometrics with life-table methods.

We find a Europe-wide life expectancy gap of approximately 4 to 4.2 years between the least and most arduous career deciles, while differences in healthy life expectancy are substantially larger, ranging from 6.9 to 9.1 years. We conclude by discussing the implications for retirement policy, the feasibility of arduousness-based retirement age differentiation, and alternative policy options.

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