PhD defence Jolinda Schram

With increased pressure to work until older age, one of the major challenges for Western societies lies in ensuring that the more vulnerable groups, such as low educated workers and those in ill health, will be able to remain at work until retirement age. Men and women with a chronic illness have considerable less access to the labour market than their healthy counterparts, especially among lower educated persons. This weaker position of lower educated persons is mostly related to the higher prevalence of ill health among this group, not to a difference in the strength of the association.

This thesis furthermore describes the influence of substantially changing working conditions on the risk of exit from paid employment for workers with ill health and concludes the more adverse changes in working conditions, the higher the risk of exit from paid employment. Looking at differences in working years lost for different socioeconomic groups these are primarily attributable to unemployment, while differences in working years lost between workers with different physical work load factors was primarily attributable to disability.

The research is important because it adds to the theory building as well as to practice – namely, how can we keep vulnerable groups being in paid employment. Insights that emerge from this research project will be of use to policy makers and practitioners, contributing to knowledge building that can, for instance, strengthen the use of social indicators such as working life expectancy and working years lost into public administration.