Europe’s population is currently the oldest in the world, and it is still ageing. This demographic shift is changing societies in an unprecedented way. Researchers and policy-makers fear that we will only have sustainable pension schemes and a sufficiently numerous workforce if people work until old age. Consequently, many current policies strive to increase workforce participation and delay retirement. But can such policies for older workers be effective? Life-course scholars argue that experiences have time-delayed effects. What people experience during youth and mid-age influences whether they work in old age. Thus, policies for older workers may intervene at too late an age to make a difference. This study investigates time-delayed effects on older workers, focussing on the effects of unemployment spells, which are said to scar work biographies and permanently hamper careers. This study found that life-courses across Europe follow a small number of characteristic patterns, with men’s life-courses being more homogenous then women’s. Men’s life-courses are usually structured around paid work, with the biggest difference being whether retirement is preceded by work, unemployment, non-employment or poor health. Women’s life-courses are structured around the balance between paid work and childcare, with the biggest difference being whether both activities are combined or exclude one another. Gender-differences decrease over time, because men experience more spells of unemployment and non-employment, which lowers their workforce participation rates, and because women increasingly stream into the labour market, either by combining paid work and childcare or by not having children. However, this growing equality comes at a cost: Unemployment and non-employment among men increase their old age poverty risk; and childlessness reduces the number of future informal caregivers, possibly leaving older people with a lack of support. Individuals fare differently during economic crises, depending e.g. on their age and household situation. While unemployed youths can still influence how their further working careers turn out, unemployed older workers usually leave the labour market into non-employment or pension. Individuals in equal partnerships, where both partners work for pay to the same degree, most likely retire into pension. Individuals in unequal partnerships, where partners work for pay to different extents, however, most likely retire into non-employment. Unequal partnerships can e.g. evolve because one partner experiences unemployment or abstains from paid work to look after children. These insights underline that questions of unemployment and retirement are closely linked with the household economy. Policies facilitating women’s workforce participation, such as encompassing childcare policies, create more equal paid work divisions in households and help people to work longer and retire into pension. As such, they increase equality and help maintain a numerous workforce and financially sound pension schemes. At the same time, more men slip to the fringes of the labour market and possible shortages in old age care emerge. Therefore, coordinating workforce and pension policies, childcare policies and old age care policies promise more effective solutions with little unintended side-effects.
