The health and capacity to work of older men and women in Canada

We address the health capacity to work among Canadian older workers using two complementary methods, aggregate mortality risk and individual health indicators. We find that men in 2012 would need to work more than five additional years between ages 55-69 to keep pace with how much men in 1976 worked, holding health capacity constant. For working women, the comparable result is only two years more work. Most of these gaps arose before the mid-1990s, as employment advances have offset mortality improvements since then. Regionally, more than half the Ontario-Atlantic employment difference among older men is rooted in health differences.