The Reversal of Early Exit from Work in Ageing Societies: European Welfare State Reforms in Comparative Perspective

Coping with demographic ageing is considered to be an important concern in order to make welfare states more resilient in respect to economic and social sustainability. Reforms in European and other advanced welfare states have increasingly aimed at shifting from policies encouraging early exit from work towards active ageing reforms promoting longer working life. Early retirement has widely been regarded as a reaction to economic restructuration, promoted through generous retirement provisions in many welfare states over the last four decades. Particularly in continental Europe, the parallel emergence of an early retirement culture promoted the persistence of a “welfare without work” problem, while Nordic, Liberal or Asian welfare regimes were more capable of maintaining higher employment among older workers. More recently, a political paradigm shift has been advocated, raising the retirement age, phasing out early exit opportunities, and increasing activation measures for older workers. Our cross‐national comparison analyses this shift, but goes beyond a mere focus on holistic welfare regimes as we examine the differences between welfare state pull factors and economic push factors. Furthermore, using temporal comparison, we also study the impact of the recent retrenchment of welfare benefits and the importance of employment integration to promote employment of older workers, showing some path departure from alleged static regimes. Based on a study of OECD countries, we investigate in a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) employment rates of older workers.