Rafal Chomik and John Piggott
The fiscal challenges of population ageing can be tackled in a number of ways. These include investing in capital and productivity of the smaller workforce, greater saving for retirement, higher migration, an active population policy, reducing benefits for the old, and/or encouraging and enabling them to work longer.
This briefing focuses on the latter. It presents historical and international precedents for higher mature-age labour force participation rates in Australia, summarising available data as well as looking at the public policy response so far and the potential for further intervention.