Aging

In a comprehensive way we will explore consequences of an aging population: on employment risk for individual workers, on employment and wage structures in firms and on its demands on public support programs like (early) retirement and disability pensions. From a worker's perspective potential problems arise, if the wage schedules are not flexible enough to cope with falling productivities of elderly workers over time. Using linked employer-employee data we will look at wage and employment patterns of elderly workers after exogenous plant closures, at substitution processes between old and young workers in firms and the interrelations between firm- and worker-specific wage components and age and tenure profiles. Moreover, internationally comparable SHARE data will be used to study connections between different forms of public support programs and labor force participation.