People with higher education have the best health. They live longer than those with less education. They also get less tired at work and are sick less often, ScienceNordic reports.
Statistics Norway and other studies have thoroughly documented this several times.
So researchers at the University of Oslo thought that this more highly educated group would also last the longest in working life.
But contrary to what they believed at the start of project Exit Age, the new data showed a different picture.
Researcher Tale Hellevik presented preliminary findings from the research during the Centre for Senior Policy's 50th anniversary event in Oslo last week.
Some people retire and hop a plane south. Some move into their country cottage. Still others devote their retirement years to their children and grandchildren.
Tale Hellevik and her colleagues surveyed individuals between the ages of 67 and 75 who had had income-generating work the week before the researchers interviewed them.
Among the 67-year-olds, 27 per cent were earning money. Among the 70-year-olds it was 21 per cent.
Two-thirds of individuals who work after their 67th birthday are men.
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Almost everyone takes their full retirement pension while they are still working. Few people continue to work for economic reasons.
To the researchers' great surprise, people’s level of education has little effect on whether or not they continue to work.
“One-third of the oldest workers have university or college education and two thirds have less education, the same distribution as in the population generally. Most people with higher education are in academic professions,” says Hellevik.
Those with less education have many different professions. Most are in the sales and service industries. But many are process and machine operators, transport workers, farmers, fishermen and craftspeople.
Older workers are more often self-employed and tend to work less in the public sector than the rest of the working population does.
Another characteristic of older workers is that their desire to work is as strong now – or stronger than – ten years earlier.
“We haven’t known much about this age group,” says Katharina Herlofson, who heads the research project.
Norwegian and international research has mainly concentrated on people in their 50s through age 65, which is the usual retirement age in many countries.
