Demographic change and population ageing represents a major challenge for European countries. To ensure sustainability of the pension system and to prevent and tackle labour shortages, working lives need to be lengthened under good conditions. From 2016 to 2018 Nicola Duell participated in an OECD project, supported by the European Commission, on promoting longer working lives in EU countries. She provided major inputs to 22 country notes on policies to promote longer working lives. The objective of the country notes is to summarise the implementation of policies to promote longer working lives over the last decade and an assessment of progress towards raising effective labour force exit (or retirement) ages for both genders. The focus is on measures and reforms implemented since the crisis in each country, along three broad areas: i) strengthening incentives for workers to continue working at an older age; ii) encouraging employers to retain and hire older workers; and iii) promoting the employability of workers throughout their working lives.

She contributed to the policy toolkit of good practice, available at: http://www.oecd.org/employment/ageingandemploymentpolicies.htm

Nicola Duell also participated in the Workshop “Delivering higher effective retirement ages”, organised jointly by the European Commission and the OECD on 28 June 2017 in Brussels [Link to the project site] ; and presented findings on “How will the demand for older workers be influenced by their wages and skills?” (with Luke Haywood) and on “How well are late-career labour markets functioning, including in the context of digitalisation? Which employment policies for longer working lives will be needed?” (with Anne Sonnet).

In addition, Nicola Duell is involved in an ongoing OECD review on “Working Better with Age: Japan”, to be finalized in the course of 2018 [Link]

In 2014, Nicola Duell drafted large parts of “Working Better with Age: Switzerland” [Link to the OECD publication site]