Beth, america fans are living longer and healthier. Lives than our parents and grandparents did. And we hear a lot about how working longer is a logical, maybe even inevitable response to this trend. You, in the introduction to your book that your is to examine the viability of this working longer framework. Can you say more about how your book is helping to fill gap in the working longer conversation. Yeah, so thats a great place to start. Lets talk a little bit about where does this whole kind of working longer framework come from . What is this idea . So americans are living longer lives than they were 50 years ago . Thats true in most nations around the world. Most nations are getting older people who are living longer are going to need income from more years of life. And so the question is, where is that income going to come from . Where is that money going to come from . And as different nations have grappled with this. The big solution thats come up is that people should just keep working. They should delay and work longer. And thats really become an orthodoxy. So it has a lot of advantages on the face of it. Know, it looks logical, it looks logical because americans are living longer lives. Theyre on average, healthier, as well as, living longer jobs are on average age, less physically demanding than they were, say, 50 years ago. And people have more education than they did 50 years ago, which might open up some different job possibilities, people in their older years. So of these things, people have looked at this, policymakers have looked at this research as have looked at this and said, hey, is totally logical if were all going to live longer, were all just going to have to work longer. And it seems to solve some problems, too. So it seems to be a win, win win. That is it seems like for individuals thats going to help to shore up Retirement Security, which is pretty fragile in the us it seems like its win for employers who are going to be able to tap a bigger pool of experienced labor if more Older Workers stay in the workforce. And it seems like it has the potential to shore up Social Security, which is facing a shortfall if people are able to work longer than we can, perhaps raise retirement ages for social. Security and that will cut the cost of Social Security and make it easier to balance the books for Social Security. So all of these things have come into play as people have looked at the solution and said, hey, you know, work longer. Thats going to work out what. We came to think, is that this question, this possibility, as you said, has not been. Well examined, hasnt really been thought through the way that it needs to be and hasnt been of critiqued and queried in the way that it needs to be. And so thats really what we out to do with the book is to say, okay, how realistic is this for people to be able to delay retirement . And usually in terms delaying retirement, you know, people talking about like, well, can we delay retirement from 65 to 67 . Say the in the us, the full retirement age for Social Security has been increasing gradually from 65 to 67. And some people suggest that it should be 70 years old or higher. So you know, if the retirement ages is increasing, you know, maybe this is going to work out. But when look at the when we looked at the problem, what we is that the averages look pretty good. But if you look the inequalities it looks a lot less good. That is when you look at the distribution as well as the average in terms of outcomes for work, for retirement for health, the picture looks a lot different. So we started to ask, okay who are we leaving out . Who are we leaving behind when were having working longer conversation, when were thinking that people can. Yeah, mostly delay retirement, thats going to be fine and they just need to be persuaded or encourage age to work a little longer. So thats really where the book came from. Thats where the whole question came from. And our feeling that it was really time to question some assumptions that have been made and not looked at. So i wanted to follow up on what you were just saying about people possibly being left behind one of the Key Assumptions kind of and youve alluded to this, one of the Key Assumptions underpinning the idea that working longer is a solution or maybe the solution to population aging is the idea that everybody basically still is working when they get to be 60 or 62. And its possible for them to delay retirement by up beyond this age if they want to. Is it actually accurate to say that most people are still working at those ages . Yeah, thats absolutely critical. I think we have this sort of notion in mind about what retirement looks like. Right. This idea that we sort of work in a career job, you know, maybe with a limited number of employers over the whole course of our lives. And we get to 65 and we get the gold watch or whatever, and we retire and we go off and, you know, fish or golf or volunteer. Yeah, thats kind of the mental model of retirement, but thats actually not the case for an awful lot of americans. And, you know, if it ever was the case, its less so, i think, than it to be as people have more different employers over their lives and more precarious employment, more unstable employment over the course of their lives. When we actually look the numbers for in terms of and Labor Force Participation, you can see that by the time americans get to their late fifties, you know, kind of 55 to 59, already about a third of americans in those years are working for pay by. The time we get to 65, were looking at fewer than half of and about 40 of women are still working for pay at that age. So this idea that we work sort of steadily up to a given moment and then we retire and thats you so sharp cut off just isnt the way that retirement actually in the us and thats hugely important for thinking about how do we manage the whole retirement transition so just following up on this thread about the as you mentioned a minute ago the career job and the gold watch waiting for you at age 65. That is the model a lot of us kind of have in mind when we think about the retirement decision. But one of the things i learned from reading your book is that actually a lot of people work a lot more intermittently in the up to retirement, a lot more being in and out the labor force. Can you talk a little bit more about that phenomenon and what its consequences are for the ability to work longer . Yeah, thats really important. Something that we learned in the course of doing the research for this book, we started to look not only at the kind of Labor Force Participation or employment rates, you know, at a given moment in time. But also, like, how does this unfold across peoples lives . So we looked at the stability of employment in peoples fifties kind of, you know, between early fifties and early sixties, the earliest age that you can claim Social Security is 62. So, you know, kind of whats happening in the decade before get to age 62, the earliest age that you could claim Social Security. And what we found, i think really surprised us i would not have guessed it coming into this research, which is that only about half of americans are steadily all the way through that decade. About 15 say that they are never employed that time. And then about a third are intermittently employed. That is, theres at least some point during those years in which theyre not employed. And this is hugely consequential because working longer, that is in terms of like, you know, working, say, beyond age 62 is hugely concentrated among people who have steady employment all the way through their fifties, among who have steady employment all the way through their fifties, about 80 of them work at some point between the age of 62 and 66. So, you know, that is a really strong, long precursor to working longer, having a steady job all the way through your fifties. But for the third of americans who are in intermittent employment, the rates of working longer, working beyond age 60 to drop really fast, its about 35 of those people are working. At some point in their kind of mid sixties. Only about a third of those people. So what we came to understand is that a couple of things, one that we really need to look at the at retirement much you know we tend to look at retirement decisions like you know well if people are retiring at 65. Could we get them to stay in labor force till 67 . Does this extend a couple of years . You know, were kind of thinking of those years, five 6770, when were thinking about working longer and delayed retirement, but actually we need to be looking at this much much sooner. We need to be looking at whats happening. People in their jobs, in their lives, in their forties and fifties, because thats really where the the groundwork for the groundwork is is laid for working longer into your sixties, beyond. And so continue here. I mean, an overarching really the entire book is that we to be thinking about much more about social one economic inequality when we think about working longer and policies that affect Older Workers. You mentioned a minute ago that averages thinking about whats happening with the population kind of as a whole can can be sometimes be misleading. Can you give us some example of how focusing on the average health or job or finances can lead us to overlook challenges that are facing important segments of the population . Yeah, i love that you asked that question. It really is one of the sort of foundation of this book was to say, lets not look at the trends, the averages. Lets also look at whats to people who are in different subgroups of the population by their level of by their race, ethnicity, by gender, by they live in the country. Whats the local labor market like when they live where they live all of these sorts of things that are, you know real dividing lines and fissures within American Society and those are inequalities that map on to the working longer conversation lots of ways the minute that you start to look at that way. So you mentioned and thats one of the really important things because one of the real sort of underpinning of the working longer idea, this idea that not only americans living longer, but also theyre living healthier lives in their older years. Right. You get this sort of is the new 60 or i think i saw a headline not too long ago that is the new 50. Were getting younger and younger here. So if thats true, the logic goes, you know, if were going to be healthier for more years, why dont we spend a few more of those years in the labor force that shouldnt be too big and ask. But when you start to look at the that this breaks down across different groups, especially by education and by income you have huge inequalities in some cases inequalities that are growing time for example in, during the past decade, men at age 40 say could expect to live to about age 87 if they were in the top 25 of income but if they were in the bottom 25 of income, their Life Expectancy was about a decade shorter. Age 77. Theres a huge huge difference is huge inequalities in, you know, just the number of years that you can expect to live and the health that people have, those kinds of inequalities as well all sorts of poor health are more prevalent among people who are in disadvantaged groups across the board and of thats really well known. But i think we havent brought that into the conversation about delayed retirement enough because what we really found is that the people who are in the groups who are most likely to have poor health because of challenges that they have faced for much of their lives. In many cases, those are the people are least able to retire financially theyve probably been least able to save they the smallest Social Security benefits so they can least afford retire. But theyre most likely have Health Problems that are going to interfere their ability to to work or at least for working longer to be a really good and healthy option for even if they do continue to work. This is especially important. People who have lower of education are typically in jobs that are very physically demanding. So nearly of americans who are still working in their late fifties. Are in jobs that are really demanding physically some way. That is, they involve a lot of like bending, lifting, twisting, or theyre, you know, different sorts of hazardous, difficult environments. And you could think of things like working in a warehouse where you might be walking miles and a day to do the pick of all of these things that youre trying to ship out or working in a restaurant, which is hugely physically, you know, youre on your feet, youre moving, youre lifting things. You working in really difficult environments a lot, the time, even things that we dont think of as physically demanding, like retail or hairdressing really are very physically demanding. Youre on your feet for a long time. Those can be extremely jobs to stay in as people age. They can be difficult at all ages, very demanding at all ages, but especially for Older Workers. And yet those are, again, the groups that, you know, the groups who are working those sorts of jobs are also the groups, people who tend to have the worse health because of the challenges that they faced across their lives and who have the least Retirement Security. So you really have this kind of perfect coming in terms of Retirement Security for people in disadvantaged groups. Lets go a little on this point on inequalities, health, because i think its so important a lot of as we talked about already, a lot of the motivation for the idea that policies presume longer work lives. Is this idea that were all working longer and youve already told us about some of these really big difference is kind of at a moment in time between say less educated and more groups in terms of their Life Expectancy. I wanted to bring in the kind of over time dimension and mention a recent study that the national of sciences did that basically compared people born in the 1930 co birth cohort and people born in 1960 and found that virtually all of the gains in Life Expectancy this working longer that we hear so much about. All of these gains were really being experienced by people more less in the upper half of the Income Distribution where people in the bottom 40 of the Income Distribution really had not experienced any gains in working longer. Can you say a little bit more about you know, weve been talking about Life Expectancy, also just about Peoples Health when in their fifties and sixties do we see the same kind of differences across groups in terms of chronic diseases as back pain, other kinds of things that could inhibit peoples ability to work, especially when theyre doing the kind of physical jobs you were just talking about. Absolutely. So thats a really terrific point. I think, in both health and employment what you see is that these averages hide really big disparities. So you exactly as youve said, the you know, the top bit of, the distribution, the people who are in the best position who have the college degrees, whove been in stable, whove earned higher wages for much of their lives, you know, and also who tend to have desk jobs, who are able to do jobs, even if they have some physical health. Those are the people whove really captured all of the gains in Life Expectancy, in health and in employment at older ages. So you have these growing in health and employment at older ages. You asked about inequalities in health and other measures other than just the number of years youre going to live. And thats hugely important because, you know, we really reduce health to difference between being alive and dead and i think one of the most consistent in all of the social sciences is that people who are more advantaged tend to have Better Health by almost every measure of health that we can come up with in almost every time in place that can look, then people who are less advantaged. Thats really true. The board and in the us over the past 3 to 4 decades, weve seen some really worrying changes as you. In the bottom half of the Income Distribution and in terms of health, in terms of wellbeing, were talking about things like chronic conditions. Were talking about things like, you know, just, you know, disabilities affect your daily lives, the ability to kind of take care of yourself on a daily basis. Those all those, you know, forms of ill health are all much more common among people in disadvantage to age groups. And i think know weve weve premised the kind of working longer idea on on the idea of sort of unlimited and Continuous Improvement in health we sort of take for granted that people in every demographic are going to live longer theyre going to have health, theyre going to be able to work longer. You know, all of this is going to get better. And i what were increasingly understanding is that there are no guarantees there. We are seeing for substance all sections of the Population Health conditions are, you know, at least no better than the general ones ahead of them. And in some cases and by some measures, worse than generations ahead of them. So we cant take this idea of sort of continuous for granted. And i think thats a really important challenge to the that working longer isnt easy solution to population aging. We to bring in some of the real people that feature in one of my favorite chapters in the book it was calledhe chapter is cald dying with your boots on. Very evocative. It was written by mary gatta and jessica horning. So im thinking in of diane, a 69 year old hostess, a restaurant, and joan, 66 year old bartender. Their stories really highlighted for me that some people there are actually too poor not to work for them. Retirement is an unattainable luxury. Can you help us understand from their stories or more generally, how is it that some people reach for tia mitchell age with so resources to support . Yeah. Im really glad that you asked that chapter because i love all the chapters, but thats one of my favorites too. I think it really towards the need to bring stories into the bring the qualitative evidence of whats actually happening in peoples lives into the conversation thats know dominated by numbers numbers are important i love numbers but we also to be understanding you know some of the experiences and strategies that people are actually using as their aging in these years. So you mentioned couple of these people who were interviewed in this chapter and who are quoted in terms of how theyre handling these years. I you mentioned diane, so she is a 69 year old restaurant hostess who has worked her entire in restaurants from the time that she 18 and working night shifts at a local diner she has worked hard her whole life and at various points in her life she has gone through layoffs. When know a restaurant she was working at was sold or closed, went into new management, went into bankruptcy and, you know, shes had to move on and to find new jobs. Its not been something thats been, you know, stable for her as shes had to, you know, find way through this and as shes gotten older and older, the of finding new when she goes through layoff has gotten harder and and you you know age 69 shes finally come to the point where she has to declare bankruptcy because shes no able to sustain you know just her day to day expense is and at 69 shes still trying to work because she cant afford to retire or shes looking for jobs, hostessing, working cafes. Shes put an ad on craigslist offering to pet it for local families. Anything that she can do to, earn some money. But shes two months behind on her rent. And if she cant make, her rent her next strategy that shes going to live in her car with her cat. So we have the where its just you know, its a really, really difficult financial situation for for diane. And theres no clear way out of it. Her now the question you ask, so how did that happen . How did she get to nine with so little Financial Security and thats a really important question in terms of, you know, how do we think about improving the situation for more americans who might be in that kind situation of financial precarity . Is the age. So part of the answer for diane is shes worked her whole life in a low wage sector or the federal minimum wage is 7. 25 an hour. That hasnt changed for decades. And real value of that what it can buy you has declined over the years pretty sharply. And its now the us minimum wage is now has the lowest power of really any minimum wage among developed nations. So thats part of it. Working in the Restaurant Industry specifically, you have whats called a sub minimum wage, a tipped submitted. Of 2. 13 an hour. So that means that the restaurant only has to pay dollars and 0. 13 an hour. The rest is supposed to be made up from tips, which sometimes works out well and sometimes so. Were talking about very low income throughout. Her life so very few to save she was never in a situation where she able to you have an employer based pension and actually hugely important in the us only half of American Workers have some kind of employer based Retirement Savings. A for a1k or a traditional pension, only about half so really. You know, the kind of savings that we think of in terms of know how you save with employer those are only reaching about half the population and diane was not one of those people you know a lot of low wage jobs dont offer those of benefits so thats part of the story. She wasnt able she didnt have the income to be able to save didnt have an employer who was able to offer her Retirement Savings benefits and because she was working in the Restaurant Industry. There were many places during career where she was working off the books and that means that during that time when she was working off the books, her employer taking Social Security taxes out of her wages, she wasnt paying into social. And so when she to being able to claim Social Security in her sixties the monthly benefits that she was receiving were very low because she hadnt paid into Social Security for as many years as she had actually been working. So Social Security, i think just to to tag on to that, too, i think a lot of people dont realize how modest Social Security benefits really are Social Security benefits were never designed to be the only source retirement income. And so by design theyre pretty modest the average retired and benefit from Social Security about 20,000 a year. So that means an awful lot of people are living on less than 20,000 a year in their older years if theyre relying. So exclusively on Social Security. And for people who have worked whole lives in the bottom half of the Income Distribution, even if theyve worked full time, even if they havent been working off the books, the amount that they receive from social often isnt enough to meet a basic budget of, you know, just basic, you know, housing, food, you know, very basic expenses. So, you know, that was very much dianes situation. But shes, i think whats important is that dianes not a one off. Shes a you know, her situation is not so different from that of an awful lot of americans particularly who have worked their careers in lower wage jobs you know that are precarious that are hard to sustain that are often physically demanding to but its a problem actually really, really widespread for americans and not only people like diane who are in that particular situation. Well thank you for lifting up her story and. Theres so many compelling stories here. Another one that really struck, really stuck with me was somebody from pensilva a waiter named jim. If you dont mind, id actually love if could share directly some of what jim told the authors. I think this is on page 189 of the book. If you have it handy. And what do we learn from his story . How does it illustrate what you were telling us before about how poor health and the physical demands of low wage work can combine to to to create real obstacle to working longer . Yeah. So as you say, jims from pennsylvania. He says its a young mans game working in the restaurant business. Its hard to keep up with the demands. The plates are not light, and im constantly carryg heavy loads. And he mary gatta doing this research. He told her that during his thirties at one of his jobs he had to navigate two steps in the dining room. But because the restaurant was busy, hed try to jump the steps to save a few seconds on each trip from kitchen to the tables, and that all those years ago, eventually to a chronic achilles heel problem. So each night after shift, he says, his feet ache as he tries to go to sleep. And he question how long could do this work. He says, im coming up on 60 years old. I dont think i can keep it up. I dont know how much longer can do my job and my restaurant, everything is refillable. Bread, soda, soups, salad, pasta. Its like whacamole. I just run my entire shift, so that sort of situation, i think is what we need. Part of what we need to be thinking of when thinking of, you know, what does it mean for americans to try to delay retirement . What kinds of jobs are we asking them to hang onto for more years as theyre getting older . Of course, physical demands arent only reason that people might leave the labor force early and. Indeed, you know, many, as we were saying earlier, many Older Workers are still in very physically demanding jobs and theyre finding ways to cope. But its, you know, this combination of of these, you know, really intense physical demands, poor health, sometimes brought by the very jobs that they have been working for their whole careers. These are some of the things that make the idea that youre just going to work you know, into your sixties, your seventies, you know, or beyond that really calls that into question. It been thinking a lot about health and it that is one very important barrier to working for some people but its actually not the only impediment an age discrimination is another one. We should definitely pay to. Theres another story in the book of someone from new york city named a bartender in his seventies who says that where used to find it very easy to find new jobs. He struggles to find work because many many bars in his word words want the youngest model. What does the research actually tell us about how much of a barrier age discrimination is for workers . Yeah, thats hugely. Age discrimination is really perverse, massive. I think its hard to measure age discrimination because, you know, you dont always know exactly whats going inside an Employment Relationship if youre not hired, you know, if you put in an application for a job and youre hired, is it because your age, is it because of Something Else its hard to know if youre not promoted, if youre you know, gently pushed or not. So pushed towards the door it because of your age or is it because of something . Its hard to prove, but said there is really a good body evidence with some very High Quality Research that shows that age discrimination, hiring and retention is really a pervasive problem. I think this is something that, you know, older adults who are in the labor market themselves often, you know, are aware of and experience, as you say, the the case of henry, whos interviewed for this chapter, you know, not having, you know, he doesnt look like the sort of bartender that they want up front anymore. This is one very particular sort of discriminate version. The phrase for it that i love is esthetic labor. The idea that you got to look the part right the esthetic that an employer wants to hire you or tip you on because you match the brand the thing that theyre trying sell and so this is in the chapter about restaurant workers. This is especially important for women even more so than for men which is, you know, also thing is you said in the case of henry, but, you know even more for women who are expected look the part and so what happens in these cases that the women are moved to from front of house jobs like know serving tables or bartending to back of house jobs, you know, working in the kitchens or behind the scenes as they dont meet the sort of criteria for how theyre supposed to look anymore. And that kind of discrimination has real consequences because the back of house jobs tend to be less well paid than the front of house jobs. So even though these people are continue going to work continuing to, do their jobs or continue to do a theyre working for less and less pay. So i think thats hugely important. Its also really to say that age discrimination, although, you know, it has particularly serious consequences for these workers in lower wage jobs that weve been talking about, its something thats experienced by many Older Workers across the board, including people in positions of relative advantage. Peter gosselin, whos a journalist, has written terrific things about cutting old heads at ibm in which he documents how ibm deliberately pushed Older Workers out of the labor force even people who have really extremely skills and abilities and who were doing their jobs well. So this, you know, sort of age discrimination is really important. And both in terms like staying in your job, but then even more so perhaps in terms of getting hired for a new job, one of the statistics that always really sticks with me is that if you lose your job, even people who have full time. Full year career types of jobs, if they lose job because their employer decides to let them go in their late fifties or early sixties, only one in ten of those people ever has a job that pays as well as the one they lost. Only one in ten. So a lot of people who think that theyre going to be able to work longer who are counting on being able to longer in order to their retirement find when theyre laid that theyre not able to get back into a job that meets their needs. Well as the one they lost and what we see is that thats really across the board, even people with college degrees, higher degrees, as well as for people in less advantaged. Lets talk a little bit about care giving responsibilities. People in their fifties and sixties can have that kind of responsibility coming them from lots of directions. They may have aging parents or parents in law. They may still have dependent children at home, and they may also have partners who are starting to experience Health Problems. And so what do we know about how much caregiving people are actually when theyre in this age range, whether this is similar across different and whether it disrupts peoples workplace . Yeah, as you say, beyond health, beyond age discrimination, caregiving is one of the biggies in terms of how do you stay during these years, during your fifties and because of the way that we tend to give caregiving responsibilities more women and to men, this falls particularly heavily on women. When we just look at the percentage of women are caring for parents or parents in law at some point during their fifties. And were talking here about, you know, pretty intensive kind of caregiving that is helping with things like eating, bathing, dressing you know, not just running errands for, mom on the weekends, but, you know, kind of really intensive caregiving about third of women in their fifties do that kind of caregiving for parents or parents in law at some point during those years. And this is a really case where the the likelihood of caregiving is actually higher. Women who have higher degrees, who are more advantaged than, it is among women who are less advantaged. The reason for that, however or at least a big part of that reason, is that women who have who are more advantage to have college are more likely than women with less education to have living parents, because you know, as socioeconomic is sort of passed from generation to generation, the parents who were had higher levels of ses and socioeconomic status and were in Better Health, lived longer. Its daughters who are in this situation of of needing to care for them and you know this often hits around the fifties right in this, you know, window where are having difficulty staying in the labor force but really need to be staying in the labor force if theyre going to try to you know, make it all the way to the middle sixties working. So about a third of all women and disproportionately who are more advantaged and it does really cut into womens Labor Force Participation thats what the the Research Shows is that, you know, its i think its probably not a surprise that if youre doing that kind of caregiving, it makes it harder for you to work a job. It makes it harder for you to, you know, to work as many if even if you do continue to work. It makes it harder to work as many hours as you might otherwise work. And so it really cuts womens employment during those years. Its one of the reasons that women to end up with much more precarious Retirement Security than men. Its the only reason, but its one of the reasons. So weve covered lot of the factors that can make it harder for people to work longer in, intermittent work history, poor health for people on physically demanding age discrimination. And now caregiving demands. I want to shift the focus a little bit to think about role of the employer in all of this how are firms responding to, having an aging workforce, and are there things that they could be doing even better. Yeah so theres an awful lot thats written about, you know, how our employers can take advantage an older workforce, the sorts of things that they should do if they want to recruit and, retain Older Workers and. One of the chapters in the book by peter berg and matt pidcock, really, you takes it takes a sort of critical eye at that and looks at okay you know heres what Research Says employers should do, but what are employers actually and they look manufacturing employers the us and in germany and they find that in both nations the response from employers is you know pretty ad hoc very reactive that is that employers arent seeing or recruiting Older Workers as an important part of their Human Capital strategy. If have an older worker whos got very specific skills skills that might be hard to replace, then theyll do their best. Keep that person in some way, you know, to make some accommodate perhaps to help that person to stay on and work longer, but otherwise, you know, theyre not deliberately doing much to try to recruit and retain Older Workers. And in some cases, theyre actively pushing those workers out of employment at older ages. So i think in, you know, its really important to say that this how you know, how do we respond . An aging workforce, employers a have a responsibility here as well as public policy. But you know, at the moment i think they largely arent seeing it. That said, one of the other things that the chapter that looks at this really shows really well is that the context matters in terms of the, you know, social context and the context for what social scientists call worker voice that is, you know, sort of influence and power that workers have to influence their own working conditions. So because the chapter is comparing the us and germany theyre really able to compare the difference in the institutions that channel worker voice in these two countries in the us, main channel for worker voice has been well, Union Membership has fallen over the last three or four decades and in the private sector Union Membership is now, i think lower than 7 . So very few private Sector Workers represented by unions which otherwise might be able to help in terms of, you know, supporting pensions keeping Older Workers, you know, employed in their jobs for longer and, you know, helping them towards transitions within an employer that would be, you know, really satisfying for the worker and, good for the employer as well. By contrast, in theres an institution called works which allow workers to negotiate as a body with employers. And those works councils, workers, you know, a stronger say in whats important to them about work and a better base of of being able to negotiate with employers for conditions and so in germany they show that there are these institutions that help to make help Older Workers to transition for example some things like phased retirement you know different kinds of policies that might protect elderly help Older Workers to work longer or to make a retirement transition on their own time when. Theyre ready for it. I, i wanted to talk a little bit about the fit between a worker and a job, because that also seems like something might be important in someones ability to work longer. What do we know about the functional abilities of Older Workers . So things like cognitive skills, physical abilities, other kinds of abilities and whether thats actually a good match, the kind of jobs that are out there and potentially available for them. Yeah, this was really interesting to me as did this research, a chapter, ben berger and nicole masters and that has a look at this. You know, it takes this interesting perspective on saying, okay, so workers, this whole set of skills and and different jobs demand different skills and abilities. So how do these match up and in terms of longer the good news for what they found that the you know in the capacity thats represented by all of these skills and abilities really declines only as people get older at least, you know, sort of up to their seventies so really you know Older Workers are very capable you know their stereotypes that play into age discriminate and in terms of what were workers are and are not able to do what we find when we look the evidence is that really Older Workers are you know in many ways just as capable and in some ways more capable than younger workers. So thats the good news for working longer. The slightly less good news is when they look at the inequalities is especially by educational the skills and abilities and how that translates into work capacity is much, much better for people with college with higher levels of education than it for people with less. And that helps to some i think some of these inequalities. That we see in work at older. I mean, if you think of it more from the sort of, you know, from the individuals of view, you know, think about the people we were seeing in the chapter dying with your boots on. You know, those are people who in many cases love their jobs, would love to be able to do them longer. You know, the joan, one of the people that we didnt talk about who was a bartender for her whole career, talks about, you know, how she really loves bartending. You know, henry, the bartender really loved his work. Diane thought, you know, felt like her her serving, her customers in the restaurant. You know, that was she really enjoyed that was a sort of calling for her so people in very demanding jobs often love their work its not that theyre trying to you know leave their work early or get out of it but as their physical capacity diminishes as their ability to stay in those jobs becomes harder and harder. So, you know, that certainly of the places where this kind of collision of skills and abilities with the demands of work is is really tricky so you know how do we have ways to help Older Workers transition into work thats going to be a better fit for them or can we find to redesign the work itself so that its better and safer Older Workers and extension better and safer for workers of all ages . You know, both of these are different ways that we can think about coming at this problem. So, yeah, just to kind of sum up on your question, i think what we found is, you know, most have the skills and abilities that they need to work in some of job. You know well into their sixties. But that doesnt necessarily mean that going to be able to find a job or to keep a job that really matches those skills and abilities or meets their needs. Geography is an important part of this, and the chapter you wrote in this book about, geography really shows this. So well. But when you look across commuting zones, which are kind of, you know, if you think of like a metro, more or less, you know, the area that live in, if theyre going to commute to work in an area these commuting zones across the us differ in terms of the employment rate among workers in their sixties by more than 20 percentage points. So you have these disparities in terms of places where people are able to work longer where there are Jobs Available to them and, places where theyre just, you know, many fewer Jobs Available to them. So, you know, how much good does it do you to have the skills and abilities that you need in order to be able to do a job . If you live in a that doesnt have those Jobs Available to you, or if the jobs that you have skills for and abilities for, not jobs that work that employers want to hire you for. So, you know, good and good and bad news on the kind skills and abilities front. Well, the piece is so important here and i want to turn to this in our remaining time in the u. S. , as we know, there are these large Government Programs that provide benefits to older individuals. So Social Security, but also other safety net programs. How remind us how important are these programs to the financial of retirees . And do you think it is desirable for these programs to evolve to reflect the reality of our longer lives and maybe even encourage people to work longer . Yeah, thats the multibillion dollar question right there it so to start with Social Security. Social security is the absolute backbone of Retirement Security. The us about nine in ten americans over the age of 65 receive Social Security for a substantial proportion of people. Its their main or their only source of income in retirement. Its been called in with good reason. Americas largest a. P. Program. The fact of Social Security, really shrinks inequalities economic inequalities in older ages. As one of our chapters by Gary Burtless demonstrates. So Social Security is hugely, hugely critical. Important, and its hugely popular. Its very popular with voters of both parties. And i think with good reason. So Social Security, hugely important. Social security is facing a funding shortfall. It has been for many years and successive administrations have not seized the opportunity to make the changes that would be needed to close the shortfall. So what does that mean . I think a lot of people, you know, theres this sort of story of like, oh, you know, Social Security is going broke. Thats actually not correct. What the situation is, is that Social Securitys is its called a pay as go program. That is the people who are working now are paying into the program with their Social Security taxes and that revenue is going out to the people who are receiving benefits. Now. So as the population has aged. There are fewer people of working age paying into the system for the number of people who are retired and taking benefits at older ages. And so over the years as a trust fund was built up of the surplus us contributions for years has that has been drawn on in order to pay benefits that are owed to retired workers. And if congress does nothing in the you know early to mid 2030s the Social Security trust fund will run out. When that happens, it doesnt mean that Social Security is going to exist anymore. But it does mean that if congress does nothing, all benefits will be cut about 20 . And because Social Security benefits are modest to start out with a cut, 20 is a big deal and would cause a lot of hardship, especially people who dont have other of retirement income. So theres a need to close this funding shortfall. And there are various and different ways to do this. One of the proposals is to raise the full retirement age, which, as we said, its going up from 65 to 67, if the full retirement age were raised to 70, which is one of the proposals. I think that would essentially be a cut benefits of 20 of about 20 across the board. I think a lot of people dont realize that i didnt when started this research that a rise in the full retirement age from 67 to 70 is equivocal and to a 20 cut in lifetime. And that might not such a big deal. You know, if people are able to defer retirement for another three years in order to keep their monthly Retirement Benefits the same as it would have been before. But there we come back to the whole question of, you know, is it realistic to ask people to work to 70 in a lot of cases, as weve said, you know, that is not feasible or desirable for individuals to that long. So, you know, cutting benefits by raising the retirement age would fall heaviest on. The people who can least afford it other possibly eighties for closing the funding gap include raising revenues through taxation by raising the security contributions. One way to do this is to increase whats called the social cap taxation cap. So the way that Social Security taxes work is you pay Social Security taxes on your income up to a certain level. Right now, its about 147,000 that you pay on and beyond that, you pay nothing. So what this means is that who earns 1,000,000 a year, you know, from their work pays exactly the same in Social Security taxes as somebody earning about 150,000. If we were to raise the security tax cap so that people who are higher earners are paying the same percentage their income as people who are lower earners, that would go a substantial towards closing the gap. There are a number of other you know which possibilities congress chooses. Its going to have to be raising more money, you know, raising more revenue or cutting benefits or some combination of the two. And the mix that we get is likely depend on which party is in power in washington and the priorities that they have in terms of how theyd like to see Social Security funded or funded. So this conversation is leading right into one of my very favorite parts of the book. I ha multiple favorites, but thfinal chapter where you lay out policy proposals that are really inspired by your findings and the rest of the book. These fall into a couple of buckets of policies. The first one are policy. Is that help to provide a secure retirement. All americans and i think everything youve just said on Social Security is a huge piece that. But besides shoring up Social Security, are there other policies that you think we ought to consider that would fall into this bucket . Yeah, i think what we came to as we as we wrote the book my coeditor lisa berkman and i as we thought about like how do we take these new things that weve learned through all of these chapters this really fantastic introduces Plenary Group of authors have come up with you know weve got the economists weve got sociology and epidemiologists and political scientists and psychologists and industrial folks and, you know, the different perspectives that were able to come up with as we went through, you know, editing this book, what have we learned . Where does that leave us in terms of what we ought to do about the problem . Because its really easy as social scientists say, oh, heres the problem, we have a terrible problem. But then sort of walk away from it and say, well, the policymaker ought to come up with some solutions. We really wanted to try to go one better with this book to actually say, okay, what do we need to do about this . And in order for people in order for two things to happen, in order for longer to be a better for more americans, we think working longer is part of the solution and part of the appropriate response to the population. Aging. But we would like a vision of working longer where thats something that really meets a workers needs, that meets their familys needs, that, you know, doesnt harm their health as theyre in the run up to. And then we also want to see a situation where. Retirement security is improved where, you know, people afford to retire. I think we shouldnt give up on the idea that, you know, americans deserve a secure retirement after a lifetime of and dying with your boots on is not strategy that policymakers should endorse. In a sense. So in terms of security so shoring up Social Security is critical. But because Social Security benefits are modest, we need to have ways of saving for retirement, of Social Security. And as i mentioned earlier, only about half of americans have an employer based Retirement Savings of any sort pension for one pay style. We need something that is going to reach a bigger section. The American Population you can design all of the you know, 41k programs you like but they dont reach a majority of your population theyre not going to work at a population level. So some of the proposals that we think are really promising have to do with savings programs that universal that is theyre available to. Theyre automatic. You dont have to think about whether youre in. Youre out. Youre automatically in at least unless you opt out and theyre portable, meaning they dont rely on being sort of attached to your employer. They follow the worker, instead of the employer. And thats extremely important, especially for wage workers who are more likely to have to move from job to job, from employer to employer, and much less likely to be jobs where the employer actually offers a retirement benefit of, any sort. So theyre a number of different proposals out there for how to organize these savings plans. But the key is that this is you know, this is the long run we need to be acting now on these kinds of savings plans, putting these place for todays workers who are in their thirties, forties, so they can be saving for retirement in a more effective way for when they become the retirees of the future. So thats, i think, a hugely important strand of of about how we deal with Retirement Security. And then we also need to be thinking not only in terms of security in retirement, but we need to be thinking in terms of how do you how do you support people with disabilities who are not able to work, you know, all the way to 62 or 65 or 70 or wherever we set our retirement ages, Social Security, Disability Insurance is the main way that we do this. You pay into the program and if you become disabled, you for disability if you are awarded disability benefits, then you receive a modest benefit. Its extremely hard to get Social Security even if your health, Social Security disability benefits, even if your is very poor and it can take years to apply appeal to get the way through the process. This is extremely onerous and difficult process to qualify for. Disability insurance. So, you know, looking at ways that, we can speed that process so that people can get an answer more quickly looking ways to use the disability system to say, could we earlier with people who may be newly ill or injured . We know from lots of research that the best time to help people is early when theyre first ill or injured. And hopefully, while theyre still connected to an employer, you know, oftentimes very modest and inexpensive accommodations can be made that help the person to keep their, you know, keep their employment and and not fall out of the labor force. So, you know, looking at Retirement Security, Social Security, Retirement Savings for the coming generation, but also how do we make our our disability systems more robust if were going to rely on delayed retirement as a major part of our response to population aging, then we really need to look at how do we provide for people who arent able to work as long as were asking people to. Youve given us a lot to think about there. I hope that policymakers that youre the ideas that youre putting forward in this book are reaching them, because i think its a lot great ideas about how to make for more secure retirement. Im afraid were reaching the end of our time. So im just to wind up here. But i really i want to thank you both and your coauthor, berkman. I feel like this book has really reframed how i think about the working longer conversation, and i hope that thats true for the listeners. Well, so thank you so much for your time today and thank you to everyone for joining us. Thank you, courtney