Closing the age gap? Age, skills and the experience of work in Great Britain

Felstead, Alan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8851-4289 2010. Closing the age gap? Age, skills and the experience of work in Great Britain. Ageing and Society 30 (8) , pp. 1293-1314. 10.1017/S0144686X10000681

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Abstract

Populations across Europe are ageing as death rates among the old and fertility rates among the young fall. This produces a number of long-term challenges for national governments – most notably, coping with the increased demand for social services, pensions and benefits that must be funded by a declining proportion of working adults. One policy response has been to extend people’s working lives, but we know relatively little about the skills and employment experiences of older workers and how these compare with younger workers. This paper sheds new light on this issue by examining whether older workers do less well than their younger counterparts in terms of the skills of the jobs they hold, the quality of their working lives, their commitment to their current employer and to employment in general, and their attitudes towards and experiences of training. The paper also assesses whether these age gaps have closed over time. The empirical evidence for the paper is from five separate but comparable surveys carried out in 1986, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2006. Taken together, the five surveys provide information on the employment experiences of over 22,000 workers in Great Britain. This allows us to chart whether we are witnessing the disappearance of at least some of the age divisions in the labour market.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Uncontrolled Keywords:	ageing; employment; quality of work; skills; training
Additional Information:	Pdf uploaded in accordance with publisher's policy at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/0144-686X/ (accessed 20/02/2014).
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	0144-686X
Funders:	ESRC
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	17 May 2023 21:17
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/25361

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