ABSTRACT
One of the greatest challenges facing post-industrial societies and, on a growing scale, low and middle-income countries, is how to manage population ageing. Population ageing is set to accelerate for a number of interlinked reasons: baby boomers reaching retirement age, fewer young people entering the labour market and the continued rise in life expectancy. As stressed by the European Commission (2004), the problem is that early retirement schemes are short-term answers to economic downturns and enterprise restructuring. Furthermore, there is no empirical evidence that younger workers and older workers are substitutes. Early retirement was seen as an instrument to manage an increasing work force, with the result to develop incitation to leave work before retirement age. One of the negative side effect of this kind of policy is that early-retirement became gradually a vested social right for a lot of workers.
