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Flexible Employment in Later Life: Public Policy Panaceas in the Search for Mechanisms to Extend Working Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

Kerry Platman
Kerry Platman
Affiliation:
Cambridge Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ageing, University of Cambridge, UK E-mail: kp277@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Flexible employment has been suggested as an important policy solution to ‘the problem’ of inactive older workers. Temporary contracts, part-time jobs, self-employment and freelance consulting have been seen as viable options for people needing to make gradual transitions into retirement and for governments wishing to encourage an extension to working lives. Using the case of the UK, the paper examines the multi-stakeholder appeal of flexible transitions into retirement. However, the term has been poorly defined and conceptualised. Drawing on her own research, the author challenges the notion of flexible extensions to working lives for the oldest members of the labour force.

Type
Themed section on Age, Employment and Policy
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 181 - 188
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for post-doctoral fellowship funding which financed much of the writing of this paper and the Open University Business School for funding her doctoral research.