Seniors in Employment
This European research project began in January 2018 and aims to study the consequences of prolonging the working lives of men and women.
Dynamics of Accumulated Inequalities for Seniors in Employment, DAISE, is a three year project financed by among others the Norface network (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe). Five countries are engaged in the study: Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
In most European countries, the increase in life expectancy and the difficulties in funding pensions provide incentives, to a greater or lesser degree, for older workers to extend their working lives. Knowing under what conditions it is possible or desirable to prolong the working life of individuals is therefore a burning issue, since the employment of older people has consequences which can cascade down into other areas of life, including health. Apart from the issues relating to employment, retirement funding and human resources management, this topic shows the importance of inter-generational interactions for senior citizens, whether with their own adult children and their grandchildren or with their own elderly parents.
One of the hypotheses of the DAISIE project is that the impetus to prolong the working life affects almost all the members of the “sandwich generation” aged 50 years and over in Europe today. However, the consequences of this incentive appear to differ among senior citizens, and in particular represent a potential source of vulnerability for those people whose career paths have been the least continuous and the least well paid, including a significant proportion of poorly qualified women also involved in care activities.
In Sweden, Clary Krekula, professor of Sociology, is coordinating the study.
Read more about the DAISE-project at NCCR - Swiss National Centres of Competence in Research