WELL-BEING AND EMPLOYMENT OF OLDER PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRIES OF THE VISEGRAD GROUP AND THE EUROPEAN UNION
WELL-BEING AND EMPLOYMENT OF OLDER PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRIES OF THE VISEGRAD GROUP AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

Summary/Abstract: Population aging brings phenomena and challenges for which adequate strategies and solutions are sought. One of the challenges is to use the employment potential of older people in the labor market by extending their working lives in retirement age. The motives of older people who opt for active aging by continuing their working lives are diverse. Increasing well-being through employment at retirement age can be a logical step for older people who want to protect themselves against a drop in their standard of living or raise it. The article is focused on the comparison of employment and well-being of older people aged 65 and over development in the Visegrad Group countries (V4 includes Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) and the European Union. The data for the employment category come from the Eurostat database and a well-being index is created to detect the development of the well-being index level, in which data from the UNECE Active Aging Index database are used. Both categories are monitored for the periods 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018. The methods used are literature analysis, induction, deduction and comparison by regions, the whole cohort of older people aged 65 and over and gender. It is found that the employment of older people aged 65 and over has a growing trend in all regions throughout the period under review. The development of the well-being index in the countries of the Visegrad Group and the European Union in the period under review has a predominantly increasing trend, but after 2016 there has been a general decline. There is a decrease in the well-being index for older people aged 65 and over after 2014, also by sex for males after 2012 and for females after 2016 in the Czech Republic which is caused by decline of the indicators relative median income and no poverty risk. The phenomenon that has emerged in Slovakia is exceptional in that the employment of females aged 65 and over fluctuated around the level of 3% in the observed period, but it is in this category that the highest increase of the well-being index of all countries and sex in 2016 by 9% is recorded what was caused by increase of the indicators relative median income and no severe material deprivation.

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