ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s industrial decline and other economic restructuring in the UK have resulted in the premature exit of large numbers of older employees. In the face of persistently high levels of youth unemployment successive governments have joined with employers and trade unions to facilitate early exit among older workers in order to create jobs for younger people. Declining fertility and mortality rates in the UK mean that, between 1990 and 2020, the percentage of people aged over 50 in the general population will have risen from 31.2 percent to 38 percent (Walker, Guillemard and Alber, 1991). However, paradoxically, this trend appears against a background of declining numbers of older people in the labour market. The UK has experienced a substantial decline in the employment of older men since the 1950s. This accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s and resulted in three quarters of men aged 55-59, half of men aged 60-64 and less than one-tenth of men aged 65 and over being economically active in 1996 (Taylor and Walker, 1998). A similar trend has occurred among older women, although it is less steep than the male one (Guillemard, 1993).
