Career Arduousness and [Healthy] Life Expectancy in Europe An Assessment Based on Share and O*Net Data

Vincent Vandenberghe

No 2025009, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: The primary policy response to population ageing in advanced economies has been to raise the mandatory retirement age. However, these policies have reignited calls for differentiated retirement ages that take into account variations in work intensity. This paper utilises microdata to examine the relevance and feasibility of this concept in Europe. It first quantifies career arduousness using SHARE wave 7 retrospective ISCO4-digit data on careers in combination with US O*NET working conditions data. Then, using SHARE follow-up data collecting (bad)health and death information about wave 7 respondents, it estimates (healthy) life expectancy by career arduousness decile, combining econometrics and life table methods. Findings reveal a life expectancy gap between the least and most arduous careers of 4 to 4.2 years. Healthy life expectancy differences are slightly larger, ranging from 6.9 to 9.1 years. Also, women’s healthy life expectancy seems to be somewhat more impacted by arduousness.

Keywords: Ageing; Career arduousness; (Healthy) life expectancy; Retirement Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J14 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2025009.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Career Arduousness and [Healthy] Life Expectancy in Europe: An assessment based on SHARE and O*NET data (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2025009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Virginie LEBLANC ().