Gender differences among people aged 66-70 and above 70 years, respectively, regarding being in paid work and about their morbidity and sickness absence; prospective population-based cohort studies

With more people living much longer, extending working lives into older ages is a concern in many countries, including Sweden.

There are two hypotheses about who stays in work at older ages: those with better health and high incomes (the ‘status maintenance hypothesis’) or those with low pension incomes (the ‘compensation hypothesis’). Both of these have implications for gender differences in paid work after age 65 and 70, respectively.

Moreover, it is not known to what extent the association between morbidity and labour market withdrawal after age 65 differs between women and men.The aim is to gain more knowledge on gender differences in labour market transitions in later working life, and how this relates to morbidity, sickness absence, types of income, birth country, educational level, type of living area, family composition, occupation (blue-collar/white-collar), branch of industry, and psychosocial job demands and control.We will conduct at least five studies within this interdisciplinary project.

We will use microdata from several nationwide high-quality registers from Statistics Sweden, the Social Insurance Agency, and the Board of Health and Welfare, linked at individual level for all people living in Sweden in 2015 who were aged 66-70-years (n=588 716) and ≥71-years (n=1 227 541) years, respectively, and follow them prospectively for 5-years or until death.

We will use epidemiological analyses to determine to what extent there are gender differences in having paid work and, among those in paid work, in having different levels of sickness absence, among the two groups.We will also use advanced statistical modelling to study future patterns of labour market statuses over 17-years among those aged 55-64 at baseline in 2001 (n=616 818), related to prior morbidity, SA, sociodemographics and job-related factors.

All analyses will be stratified by sex, to analyse whether associations differ between women and men and if there are different mechanisms.