Labor utilization in aging populations: a comparison of age-specific weekly working hours in seven European countries

Elke Loichinger, IIASA, POP

A lot of research has been devoted to study the potential economic consequences of demographic change. A recurrent topic is the expected shrinkage of the labor force and the possible negative consequences this might have on the economy of a country. A change in GDP is the result of the summation of changes in labor productivity, the number of hours worked, the employment rate, the labor force participation rate, and of changes in the population structure. The focus of past research has been on four of these five parameters. The number of age-specific hours worked has not (yet) gotten much attention in the context of an aging labor force. The goal of the analysis at hand is to fill this gap by comparing the development of age-specific working hours across seven European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom).