- The Guardian, Tuesday 2 December 2003 10.35 GMT
Today, 7 million people over 50, a quarter of Britain's workforce, are in work - 1.9 million more than 10 years ago. For men especially, the rise is good news. In the 80s and early 90s, the proportion of male 50- to 65-year-olds not working doubled, to more than one in three. The number of older women working did not fall, but neither did it go up in a period when younger women's employment rose steeply. Since the mid-90s, however, the employment of men and women over 50 has risen faster than for the rest of the population, although the gap between over-50s and under-50s is still much wider than in 1979.
What is behind this shift? Partly, it is the overall boom in employment, but a more permanent change relates to pension funds, which may never again enjoy the surpluses fed by the 90s stock market boom. Cash for generous retirement packages is no longer available to managers seeking an easy way to shed staff. It is also possible that, encouraged by government campaigns and changing demography, employers are starting to change their attitudes to older workers.
Even though they continue to face huge prejudice, legislation due in 2006 to make age discrimination illegal should bring about a long-term change. The legislation will have teeth: it is not just a matter of having to prove discrimination; companies will no longer be able to force people to retire because they are a particular age.
Yet the upturn in demand might mask severe inequalities across the older population. University professors, senior managers and others who enjoy their jobs can find ways of working through their 60s or even 70s, often by way of part-time forms of employment that allow them to balance work and other interests. However, manual workers with grotty jobs and few skills often lack the opportunity, or desire, to work past their 50s. This reduces their already limited chance to provide for their retirement and exacerbates widening pensioner inequality, since the risk of poverty in old age is influenced partly by the work you did and how long you kept on doing it.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just completed research on transitions to retirement that confirms inequalities in the degree to which different workers can control retirement. One finding is that opportunities for self-employment as a "bridge" between a career and full retirement are concentrated among well-qualified men.
Another is that workers in their 50s, especially the large number who are caring for elderly relations and friends or for grandchildren, would like to work part-time, but are discouraged by employers or the pension system. This presents a stark choice of either continuing full-time work or retiring completely. Some soldier on, even though those with caring responsibilities are under intense pressure. Others, exhausted by their jobs and with health difficulties of their own, choose the retirement route.
The government has two main types of policy tool for promoting work among older people. One is to provide incentives and signals to encourage people to work longer. Calls to raise the state pension age are growing (especially from actuaries, whose job it is to bet on the ages that people die at, and dislike seeing the odds lengthening). However, the Rowntree research showed that financial considerations are not typically the driving force behind retirement decisions. A possible result of raising the pension age to 70 would be that just as many disadvantaged people leave their jobs early, but they face greater poverty waiting for their pensions and may not even live long enough to receive them.
A second, more constructive strand of policy is to aim to improve work opportunities for older people. This does not just mean trying to find jobs for fiftysomethings who have dropped out of work - older workers' chances of getting reconnected once they have not worked for a year or so are particularly slim. Rather, success will depend on preventing people from losing their jobs in the first place.
This is unfamiliar territory for public policy, partly because it is easier to target people who are already unemployed. Legislating against age discrimination and promoting positive employer attitudes should help at a general level. A more specific approach is to improve options such as part-time work. Parents with children under six can now have requests for flexible or part-time work considered by employers. This could usefully be extended.
Another strategy would be to tackle the causes of disillusion with work faced by so many older people, especially in routine jobs with no chance of career development. Such disillusion can create reluctant workers, feeding prejudice about older people being "past it". So in the long term, the best way to keep more people in the workforce for longer would be to promote better training, conditions and prospects throughout people's working lives.
· Donald Hirsch is special adviser to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and author of Crossroads After 50: Improving Choices In Work and Retirement, which is published today.