Increasing State Pension Age: black and white…..or grey…?

Conservatives’ plans to raise the state pension age to 66 will make youth unemployment worse leading to a 200,000 rise in unemployment in the first year – many of whom could be young jobseekers. This is the view of Ray Barrell, Director of Macroeconomic Research at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research who made his prediction at this week’s Just Ageing Seminar, hosted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). He supported his case by commenting, “If we extend working lives effectively the people we will have to help in the labour market are not those who are in a job and can stay in it for another year, but those at the other end of the labour market who are looking for a job, and the job that would have come up for them is no longer available.”

Stirring stuff when accompanied by alarmist headlines such as Tory plan to raise pension age will add to youth unemployment (Personnel Today)

But surely it’s not that simple. Not only do young, incoming job seekers not automatically replace outgoing retirees due to lack of similar skills and experience, but not all older workers are going to want to keep working or, if they do, to keep working in the same job. Research has shown that later life career changes are becoming more desirable for older individuals with those who want to work increasingly seeking to do so under their own terms. And for many those terms mean working less and working flexibly. The sooner employers start to address these issues, the sooner we should stop hearing these types of argument which effectively are comparing apples with pears – and ultimately just don’t add up.

Indeed, the Personnel Today article does not reflect a balanced view of proceedings at the Just Ageing Seminar. In particular, Sheila Wild, Head of Earnings and Age Inequalities at EHRC, arguing why the Default Retirement Age should be removed, said “ It is not a contest between older and younger workers, but about ensuring everyone who wants to work has the appropriate skills, whatever their age. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills has predicted 2 million new jobs between now and 2020 – and most of them will demand higher level skills. In securing jobs coming out of recession, skills levels are likely to be the key factor, not age”.

Fairness, equality and the lifecourse

Last week we attended the third in a series of seminars presented by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Age Concern / Help the Aged (for whom a new name is imminent). Entitled JustAgeing: fairness, equality and the lifecourse the programme focuses on inequality over the lifecourse with this particular seminar being held to examine the notion of inter-generational equity. In what was an interesting but fundamentally academic discussion, a number of contentious issues were raised not least the assumed ability of particular generations (in this case “baby boomers”) to manipulate resources to their own benefit and the detriment of others. What emerged yet again however is that we lack an adequate vocabulary to discuss meaningfully today’s ageing reality – as revealed by a clear demonstration that the generation we think of as “baby boomers” in the UK is in fact two different cohorts who have been subject to different social, economic and environmental influences relating to the different years they were born. 

But the real issue which quickly emerged from the heart of the session was the extent to which we, as a society or as providers of services, can or should expect to be able to achieve inter-generational equity and the extent to which this is either achievable or desirable.  After all, individuals always have been and will be different. As we have said so often before, why do we expect them then to suddenly become homogeneous simply because of a shared age?  It was an interesting theoretical discussion no doubt, but unfortunately there was not a great deal of practical use to take away.

It’s not going away!

This week I attended the first in a series of seminars under the title “Just Ageing” (http://justageing.equalityhumanrights.com/) which is being organised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the new charity formed from the merger of Age Concern and Help the Aged. The first seminar looked at our assumptions about the process of ageing itself during which Professor Tom Kirkwood, Director of The Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, gave a fascinating talk on the physiological and social experience of ageing.

I can’t really do justice here to his exposition which in itself was a huge summarisation of the work being undertaken. However, the message coming through loud and clear is that human beings are not per se programmed to die at any particular time – indeed the survival instinct in us is strong right to the end. So, under the right circumstances, increasing life expectancy can be expected to continue and we should celebrate old age, not see it as form of disability or inconvenience. What does happen is that imperfections in us and breakdowns in our ability to function bring on the end of our lives and if these can be eliminated or minimised then our life spans can be increased. Furthermore, many of the causes of this are “malleable” – things such as diet, housing, education, exercise, negative stress – as evidenced by differing life expectancies in different environments even within the same country.

This was the third seminar, organised by varying bodies, that I had attended in the space of a week each focusing on a differing aspect of ageing. There is much excellent work taking place and it is clear that the momentum is increasing. However, to date, government seems to concentrate only on the short term without a real “statesmanlike” approach to the longer term questions, employers (with a few exceptions) seem concerned only with damage limitation and containment of costs, and amongst the population at large there is a massive lack of awareness of the issues involved.

When will all this be pulled together?