abstract: 'Background Australians born in 2012 can expect to live about 33 years

  longer than those born 100 years earlier. However, only seven of these

  additional years are spent in the workforce. Longer life expectancy has

  driven policies to extend working life and increase retirement age; the

  current Australian policy, which has increased the eligibility for the

  pension from 65 to 67 by 2023, assumes that an improvement in longevity

  corresponds with an improvement in healthy life expectancy. However,

  there is mixed evidence of health trends in Australia over the past two

  decades. Although some health outcomes are improving among older age

  groups, many are either stable or deteriorating. This raises a question

  of how health trends intersect with policy for older Australians aged

  from 50 to 70. This paper considers the interplay between older workers''

  health and workforce participation rates over the past 15 years when

  extended workforce participation has been actively encouraged. Methods

  We compared health and economic outcomes of the older people in

  following years with the base year (start of the study period),

  adjusting for some key socio-economic characteristics such as age, sex,

  ethnicity, education and equivalized household income by applying the

  Random effects estimator with maximum likelihood estimation technique.

  Results We find that regardless of increasing longevity, the health of

  older adults aged between 50 and 70 has slightly deteriorated. In

  addition, health gaps between those who were working into their older

  age and those who were not have widened over the 15-year period.

  Finally, we find that widening health gaps linked to workforce

  participation are also accompanied by rising economic inequality in

  incomes, financial assets and superannuation. With the exception of a

  small group of healthy and very wealthy retirees, the majority of the

  older Australians who were not working had low incomes, assets,

  superannuation, and poor health. Conclusions The widening economic and

  health gap within older population over time indicates a clear and

  urgent need to add policy actions on income and health, to those that

  seek to increase workforce participation among older adults.'
affiliation: 'Doan, T (Corresponding Author), Australian Natl Univ, Res Sch Populat
  Hlth, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

  Dinh, Huong, Australian Treasury, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

  Strazdins, Lyndall; Doan, Tinh; Do, Thuy; Yazidjoglou, Amelia; Banwell, Cathy, Australian
  Natl Univ, Res Sch Populat Hlth, Canberra, ACT, Australia.'
article-number: '104'
author: Dinh, Huong and Strazdins, Lyndall and Doan, Tinh and Do, Thuy and Yazidjoglou,
  Amelia and Banwell, Cathy
author-email: tinh.doan@anu.edu.au
author_list:
- family: Dinh
  given: Huong
- family: Strazdins
  given: Lyndall
- family: Doan
  given: Tinh
- family: Do
  given: Thuy
- family: Yazidjoglou
  given: Amelia
- family: Banwell
  given: Cathy
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1186/s13690-022-00852-z
eissn: 2049-3258
files: []
issn: 0778-7367
journal: ARCHIVES OF PUBLIC HEALTH
keywords: Older people; Employment; Health; Economic inequality; Australia
keywords-plus: RETIREMENT; EMPLOYMENT; EXIT
language: English
month: MAR 31
number: '1'
number-of-cited-references: '29'
orcid-numbers: Doan, Tinh/0000-0002-2297-8187
papis_id: 923344b8bee1dfbcba05bc1d020aa622
ref: Dinh2022workforceparticipati
times-cited: '0'
title: Workforce participation, health and wealth inequality among older Australians
  between 2001 and 2015
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000776927700001
usage-count-last-180-days: '2'
usage-count-since-2013: '8'
volume: '80'
web-of-science-categories: Public, Environmental \& Occupational Health
year: '2022'