Volume 25 - Article 12 | Pages 407–436  

Occupational inequalities in health expectancies in France in the early 2000s: Unequal chances of reaching and living retirement in good health

By Emmanuelle Cambois, Caroline Laborde, Isabelle Romieu, Jean-Marie Robine

Abstract

Increasing life expectancy (LE) raises expectations for social participation at later ages. We computed health expectancies (HE) to assess the (un)equal chances of social/work participation after age 50 in the context of France in 2003. We considered five HEs, covering various health situations which can jeopardize participation, and focused on both older ages and the pre-retirement period. HEs reveal large inequalities for both sexes in the chances of remaining healthy after retirement, and also of reaching retirement age in good health and without disability, especially in low-qualified occupations. These results challenge the policy expectation of an overall increase in social participation at later ages.

Author’s Affiliation

• Emmanuelle Cambois - Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED), France EMAIL
• Caroline Laborde - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France EMAIL
• Isabelle Romieu - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France EMAIL
• Jean-Marie Robine - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

The question of the human mortality plateau: Contrasting insights by longevity pioneers
Volume 48 - Article 11

The mystery of Japan's missing centenarians explained
Volume 26 - Article 11

Arthur Roger Thatcher's contributions to longevity research: A Reflexion
Volume 22 - Article 18

The compression of deaths above the mode
Volume 22 - Article 17

Dissecting the compression of mortality in Switzerland, 1876-2005
Volume 21 - Article 19

Occupational and educational differentials in mortality in French elderly people: Magnitude and trends over recent decades
Special Collection 2 - Article 11

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Health expectancies among older adults in China: Results from the 2010 and 2020 population censuses
Volume 52 - Article 11    | Keywords: health expectancies, population censuses, residence, sex differences, Sullivan method

Uncovering disability-free grandparenthood in Italy between 1998 and 2016 using gender-specific decomposition
Volume 50 - Article 42    | Keywords: aging, decomposition, disability, grandparenthood, Italy

The question of the human mortality plateau: Contrasting insights by longevity pioneers
Volume 48 - Article 11    | Keywords: age, France, Gompertz mortality, mortality, mortality plateau, older population, parametric models, supercentenarians, survival analysis, trajectories

Gender and educational inequalities in disability-free life expectancy among older adults living in Italian regions
Volume 47 - Article 29    | Keywords: disability, gender, health, inequalities, Italy, mortality, older adults, regions

The bootstrap approach to the multistate life table method using Stata: Does accounting for complex survey designs matter?
Volume 47 - Article 23    | Keywords: complex survey, Health and Retirement Study (HRS), health expectancies, multistate life tables, race/ethnicity, Stata