Population ageing is profoundly changing the age profile of the population and the composition of the labour force, not only in OECD countries, but in developing and transitional economies worldwide. The median age of the population is rapidly rising, not only in Western countries, such as the USA, but in all major Asian countries as well. In OECD economies, population ageing has sparked the multiplication of calls for policies that support labour market participation by older workers. However, the success of such policies relies on our understanding of the determinants of older workers’ labour force participation decisions.

This timely book, published in 2013, is ‘concerned with the labour market status of older workers and how they should be considered by employers and policy makers’ (p 1). In addressing this broad question, it accomplishes a very interesting turn of focus, from the supply side of the labour markets for older workers (participation, retirement among other aspects) to the demand side. The common feature of the 18 chapters comprising this volume is that they all aim to address the fundamental issue of what labour market conditions and related policies better address the needs of an ageing workforce. The underlying message emerging from the reading of Part I (Chapters 2–5) is that the success of policies directed to boost labour force participation by older workers cannot afford to neglect to investigate the determinants of older workers labour demand and effective working conditions.

An appealing feature of this book is that although directed to address important economic and policy issues, it does not neglect to question existing and accepted knowledge (and culture) about workforce ageing. So, Part II, which comprises Chapters 6–8, focuses on labour demand and tackles the difficult issue of the relatively narrow range of labour market opportunities for older workers. Issues such as training and retraining activities, where the demand side of the labour market plays a crucial role (in Chapters 6 and 8), are identified as crucial processes through which working life can be extended.

Part III investigates the changes that workplaces must undergo to respond to an ageing workforce's needs. Only recently has the literature begun to address the causes of the relatively narrow range of job opportunities available to older workers and its impact on labour market participation. Older workers are often forced to move across job situations because the characteristics of the job chosen in early years are not suitable anymore. Chapter 9 acknowledges that ‘The physical, mental and social work environment, organization of work and work demands should correspond to the prerequisites and needs of different generations’ (p 135). Clearly the matching between older workers’ ‘work ability’ and their jobs is far from satisfactory, and this is one of the main causes of early retirement. Understanding the notion of ‘work ability’ and the way job design can enhance or rather reduce older workers’ ‘work ability’ are thus fundamental steps towards the design of proper labour market policies.

Part IV, ‘Generations at the workplace’, argues for the need to start from a cultural analysis of the language that Human Resources departments often use to indicate age-related phenomena. Understanding the notion of ‘quality jobs’ as used by workers of different age is a central concern in Chapter 14, which uses a very interesting survey, namely the ‘Age and Generation Study at a Glance’ by the Sloan Centre on Ageing and Work at Boston College.

Part V is perhaps the most stimulating and challenging of the five sections. It addresses the issues of how to reconcile features of a globalized economy, with its imperative of technological change and competition, with an ageing society. By critically exploring the relationship between ageing of a population and ageing of its workforce, Chapter 15 starts by recognizing that one of the fundamental challenges to ageing-friendly changes in the labour markets are the externality effects of such changes – while most will benefit from those, the cost may be unequally born by some workplaces or workers. In a global economy, a firm may be willing to sacrifice any age-friendly policy if it does not serve the purpose of increasing its competitive edge. Thus, industry-specific market conditions can be seen as important determinants of firms’ (un)willingness to constructively engage with the ageing of their workforces. Equally importantly, financial shocks may discourage older workers from retiring without necessarily providing them with the flexibility employers often require in uncertain product markets.

At times readers may have the sense that these very institutionally detailed accounts come at the expense of some synthesis, with the necessary identification of more general common trends and issues that a synthesis requires. To rescue this reader comes the final part (Part V), where the authors acknowledge that the presented comparative evidence on older workers’ labour market experiences poses a number of questions. Thus Chapter 18 ‘questions the adequacy of much of the recent discourse concerning the employment of older workers’ (p 265) and draws upon the wealth of contributions of this text to highlight a number of important future research and policy areas. Paramount for the future successful addressing of workforce ageing will be engaging with the various levels at which labour market changes may originate, from the cultural, individual and inter-personal level, to the workplace, to the industry-level, the state-level, the inter-national and global level. Equally important will be the identification and consideration of the factors, particularly technological change, that determine the ability and willingness of firms to hire and train older workers. Improving our understanding of which employment arrangements are most effective in retaining older workers will be fundamental to address issues of older workers’ mobility between participation and non-participation, but also between employers and jobs.

A reader will finish this volume with the strong feeling that integrating labour demand with labour supply interventions is paramount to address the issues of population and workforce ageing. Ultimately, Older Workers in an Ageing Society delivers a very important message: what is at stake is not simply fiscal sustainability or inter-generational redistribution, but rather re-inventing the world of work by rebalancing the equation between life and work.