Trends in health and retirement in Latin America: Are older workers healthy enough to extend their working lives?

To counter the problems of demographic ageing, Latin American countries, like many nations elsewhere, are considering raising the retirement age in order to maintain fiscal balance and sustain economic prosperity. In doing so, however, they must take into account not only the simultaneous decline in older adults’ labour force participation but also poor health among those potentially affected by the change. In this paper, we use country comparable census data for 1970–2010 to analyse the labour force participation trends and health of male workers aged 50 years and over in Latin American countries. Our analysis focuses on two important health indicators: mortality risk and overall disease burden. We find that the greatly improved health conditions of recent years translate into lower labour force participation today than in the past, so that although contemporary male workers aged 55–59 have similar health statuses to their earlier counterparts aged 60–64, their patterns of labour force participation are very different. We therefore conclude that, overall, health does not present a barrier to raising the retirement age in Latin America, even in the longer term.