Our lives are getting longer, yes, but this does not necessarily imply more active years. As life expectancy continues to rise, there is a natural tendency to tack these additional years onto the economically in­active phases of our life course, namely to post-retirement. This can be costly for pub­lic budgets. It’s “natural”, though, because adding them anywhere else would require a conscious change to when we retire. Polit­ically, touching retirement is risky, but this is not necessarily the problem. Many countries have already begun adopt­ing measures to prolong working life.

Population ageing in Western countries has made delayed retirement and extended working life a policy priority in recent years. Retirement timing has been linked to individual factors such as health and wealth, but less is known about the role of the psychosocial work environment. A paper by researcher Ewan Carr and his colleagues drew upon longitudinal data on 3462 workers aged 50–69 from five waves of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Regression models were used to assess the association of working conditions with preferred timing of retirement and actual work exit.