Active ageing

Active ageing (active aging in the US) is a recent concept (2002) developed by the European Commission and used also in Human Resource Management. This concept evokes the idea of longer activity, with a higher retirement age and working practices adapted to the age of the employee.

Background

Europeans demography shifts towards an elder population with lower birth rates. This will have repercussions on the European economy as less and less active people will support the social costs of health-care and pension of those who stopped working. The EU-Commission has fixed 2 targets for 2010^[1]:

1. The Stockholm targets of 2001, which intend to reach 50% higher employment of elder people between 55 and 64.
2. The Barcelona targets of 2002, which intend to progressively augment of 5 years the age of retirement in order to prolong the professional life of elder people.

References

Euractiv.com EU-Commission (2002)