Active Ageing Strategies to Strengthen Social Inclusion : discussion paper

In the coming years, the share of elderly people in the whole population will strongly increase in all European Union countries. It is therefore necessary to implement a social inclusion strategy targeted towards older people both for economic and social reasons. This strategy needs to include: a substantial postponement of the retirement age, in order to reduce the burden of pensions costs and to increase total employment; an improvement in the physical condition of older workers; the maintenance of a pensioner income level close to working people's incomes; finally, the involvement of retired people in social activities. Finland is a particularly interesting country to consider, because it has succeeded in raising strongly older workers' employment rates and has launched extensive programmes to promote active ageing and to keep older people at work through social partners' involvement and through an improvement of working conditions. This review aims at analysing these programmes. What are their impacts in terms of raising Finnish older workers activity rates and social inclusion? Can they serve as a model for other EU countries facing the same problems?