Age and productivity capacity: Descriptions, causes and policy options

This article reviews how work performance differs over the life cycle by describing and discussing findings from various approaches. This includes managers evaluations, the quantity and quality of goods and services produced by workers of different ages, the performance of age-mixed teams, to what extent the age distribution of employees depends on the type of work and how the age distribution changes due to technological change and business cycle shocks, analyses of employer-employee datasets, descriptions of age-earnings profiles in settings where they could reflect performance and the output of researchers and artists over the life cycle. The causes of productivity variation by age are also considered, with a particular focus on experience and cognitive abilities. The findings suggest that productivity tend to increase during the initial years in the labour market before it stabilizes and often declines towards the end of the working life. Productivity reductions at older ages are strongest in job tasks where problem solving, learning and speed are important, while for work tasks where experience and verbal abilities matter more, there is less or no reduction in productivity among elderly workers. Trends in the age-productivity relation are discussed in relation to changing work tasks and job requirements, combined with changes in the requirement of skills (decline in demand for physical strength, increase in the need to learn new skills). Policies that could be considered to raise productivity among senior workers include on-the-job training, education and promotion of health. However, a later retirement could also raise incentives to update ones own skills and work harder at older ages (which may be achieved through pension reforms and wage liberalisation). Moreover, a better agemix in the workplace, allowing older and younger individuals to benefit from their comparative advantages, is likely to improve overall productivity in ageing nations

The Impact of a Lower School Leaving Age and a Later Retirement on the Financing of the Norwegian Public Pension System

We analyse how an extended working life could affect the sustainability of the Norwegian public pension system. Particular emphasis is given to a younger school leaving age. The school reform investigated lowers the school leaving age by two years, one by compressing primary and secondary schooling and another by lowering the school entrance age. Graduating at a younger age shifts the timing of subsequent events in adulthood toward younger ages. Individuals enter the workforce earlier, initiate childbearing at a younger age and cohort fertility may increase. This is achieved with minimal losses to human capital: Swiss and Swedish evidence suggest that such variation in the length of schooling and in the school entrance age have negligible effects on adult productivity. Using a large scale, micro-based dynamic model for the Norwegian public pension system, MOSART, we find that the school reform can play a substantial role in increasing the sustainability of public pension systems

Does school duration affect student performance? Findings from Canton-based variation in Swiss educational length

We investigate Swiss canton-based regulations determining the number of school years required to graduate from academic track secondary school. We find that this variation (12, 12.5 or 13 years) does not affect human capital levels (TIMSS math and science performance). This suggests that one could decrease school length from 13 to 12 years without decreasing student performance levels. A younger school leaving age could extend the working life, soften the burden of population ageing, increase life-time income and narrow the gap between desired and actual fertility

Variations in Productivity over the Life Span: A Review and Some Implications

This paper presents a review of the literature on productivity differentials across adult age groups. The causes of age variations in productivity are addressed with special emphasis on the role of cognitive abilities and labor market performance. According to most findings, older workers tend to be overpaid relative to their productivity. The consequence can be difficulties in employing elderly workers

How Would 'Tempo Policies' Work? Exploring the Effect of School Reforms on Period Fertility in Europe

Governments and NGOs in many industrialized countries are concerned about the long-term demographic impacts of low fertility levels. We discuss how "tempo policies," reforms that shift the timing of childbearing, affect period and possibly cohort fertility levels. One such policy is a school reform that decreases the educational completion age, which could be achieved through an earlier school entrance age and compression of the school duration. Such policies are currently in focus in several low fertility countries, although for reasons not related to family issues. We show that a younger initiation of childbearing would have a rejuvenating effect on the age composition and increase the size of the population. Even if just the timing and not the levels of fertility increase, a younger timing of fertility could soften the trends of shrinking and ageing populations

Relative mortality among criminals in Norway and the relation to drug and alcohol related offenses

BACKGROUND: Registered offenders are known to have a higher mortality rate, but given the high proportion of offenders with drug-addiction, particularly among offenders with a custodial sentence, higher mortality is expected. While the level of overall mortality compared to the non-criminal population is of interest in itself, we also estimate the risk of death by criminal records related to substance abuse and other types of criminal acts, and separate between those who receive a prison sentence or not. METHODS: Age-adjusted relative risks of death for 2000-2008 were studied in a population based dataset. Our dataset comprise the total Norwegian population of 2.9 million individuals aged 15-69 years old in 1999, of whom 10% had a criminal record in the 1992-1999 period. RESULTS: Individuals with a criminal record have twice the relative risk (RR) of death of the control group (no-offenders). Males with a record of use/possession of drugs and a prison record have an 11.9 RR (females, 15.6); males with a drug record but no prison record have a 6.9 RR (females 10.5). Males imprisoned for driving under the influence of substances have a 4.4 RR (females 5.6); males with a record of driving under the influence but no prison sentence have a 3.2 RR (female 6.5). Other male offenders with a prison record have a 2.8 RR (females 3.7); other male offenders with no prison record have a 1.7 RR (females 2.3). CONCLUSION: Significantly higher mortality was found for people with a criminal record, also for those without any record of drug use. Mortality is much higher for those convicted of substance-related crimes: more so for drug- than for alcohol-related crimes and for women

National Variation in Cognitive Life Cycle Development (Revised 7 November 2013)

Maintaining cognitive functioning through mid- to late-life is relevant for both the individual and societal aim of active ageing and reducing dependence in old age. This paper analyses life-cycle variation in country-level rank ordered cognitive performance over a 40-year period. For the cohort born between 1949 and 1952, we observe standardized mathematical test scores at teen age from the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) and cognitive test performance at mid-life, based on the SHARE survey. This allows us to compare the relative country ranking in 1964 and the performance in 2004 of the same birth cohort. Our results show that those countries which had the highest scores in math tests taken by 13 years old grade level students are not the same countries that, 40 years later, have the top performing scores in cognitive tests among mid-age adults. This highlights the importance of considering country-level influences on cognitive change over the life cycle, in addition to individual characteristics. Further studies are required to explore the link between specific contextual factors and cognitive functioning before we will be able to formulate relevant policy implications from these results

The end of secularization in Europe? A socio-demographic perspective

Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change, and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline, and to the role of demography – notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981-2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the ten countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning

The Educational Effect on Cognitive Functioning: National versus Individual Educational Attainment

Maintaining good cognitive performance at all ages in light of demographic changes represents a social, economic, and health-related challenge, particularly in aging countries. A strong positive relation between individual level education and cognitive performance has already been identified in earlier research, but the differences in relation to national education across countries are uncertain. This study adds to the literature by disentangling the effect of national and individual education levels. It aims to determine the association between education (individual and national) and cognition across countries that vary substantially in terms of their demography, average national education, and level of economic and social development. We investigate common cognitive ability measures from representative surveys of individuals aged 50 and above. All data come from aging surveys conducted in 2007-2012 covering more than 24 countries in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe, and involving about 120,000 men and women aged 50+. We investigate two specific cognitive ability measures: episodic memory and category fluency (vocabulary size). A multilevel approach is used to assess the effect of individual as well as national education level, controlling for sex, age, and health. We find a positive education-cognition relation for individuals across all our countries despite their very different characteristics. Moreover, our results show that increasing the average national education level is related to better individual cognitive performance net of the individual education effect

How Education Drives Demography and Knowledge Informs Projections

This paper makes the case for systematically adding education to age and sex as a third standard demographic dimension. It directly addresses the question whether the pervasive association of education with demographic outcomes reflects a causal relationship. Based on the notion of functional causality, the paper reviews theoretical and empirical approaches for assessing this question according to three criteria. It also explores possible alternative explanations such as reverse causality and self-selection, concluding that a functional causal relationship between education and health- and fertility-related outcomes is supported by the evidence. The paper then describes the book's expert argument-based approach for defining assumptions for population projections and compare this approach with how European national statistical offices now make and use their assumptions for population projections. Against this background the approach chosen for this study combines a structured substantive inquiry among hundreds of international experts with formal statistical models