The fourth Demography Forum, taking place on 6-7 May in Brussels, will focus on investing for Europe’s demographic future.

IER's Bernard Casey will act as Rapporteur on age and employment for the sesssion entitled "Enable people to be active longer".

IER's latest Bulletin summarises the key findings of a qualitative study on volunteering in later life, drawing on interviews with representatives of voluntary organisations in England. The study investigated policies and practices towards recruitment and volunteer management, with a specific focus on opportunities and any restrictions for older people. Among others, it also sought to elicit views on the impact of extending working lives and care responsibilities of older people on volunteering. It was conducted as part of a larger programme on Activating Senior Potential in an Ageing Europe (ASPA), which was funded under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities Theme of the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme. This research adds to the “relatively neglected theme of volunteering by older people in Europe” (Ehlers et al., 2011, p.1).

Bernard Casey will be making a presentation at the forthcoming 2nd International Conference on Evidence-based Policy in Long-Term Care. The conference will be held at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK from 5th to 8th September 2012. Bernard's paper will be on "The development of employment and skills in the social care sector: a comparison of Germany and Japan". The paper draws from work Bernard did for Skills for Care and Development (SfC&D). The conference programme with an abstract of the paper can be downloaded from the conference website.

Bernard Casey made presentations at two recent events on issues relating to the employment of older people.

The first, entitled “The Employment of Older People in a Period of Stagnation and Deregulation” was prepared together with Atsuhiro Yamada from the Department of Economics at Keio University, and delivered at the latest ESRC Rethinking Retirement Seminar Series (University of Kent, 4 May). The presentation focused on older people’s employment in Japan over the past twenty years, looking at changing economic circumstances since the end of the bubble economy and the coming to retirement age of the post war baby-boomers. A copy of the presentation can be downloaded from here.

The second was a presentation on “Working Beyond Retirement: explaining a UK phenomenon” at the 7^th European Conference of the European Social Insurance Platform (Brussels, 23 May). Under the title "Active and Healthy Ageing and Solidarity between Generations - the role of social insurances", the event aimed to clarify the role of the social insurance in addressing the challenges and opportunities of societal ageing. Copies of the slides can be downloaded from here.

In the fifth of a series of podcasts about our work at the Institute for Employment Research, Professor Jenny Bimrose tells us about some of the findings of her international study of older workers, in particular she focuses on the career development of older women and the role of careers guidance.