Trends of healthy and unhealthy working life expectancy in Germany between 2001 and 2020 at ages 50 and 60: a question of educational level?

BACKGROUND: Extending the number of active working years is an important goal both for maintaining individual quality of life and safeguarding social security systems. Against this background, we examined the development of healthy and unhealthy working life expectancy (HWLE/UHWLE) in the general population and for different educational groups. METHODS: The study is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, including 88 966 women and 85 585 men aged 50–64 years and covering four time periods (2001–05, 2006–2010, 2011–2015 and 2016–2020). Estimates of HWLE and UHWLE in terms of self-rated health (SRH) were calculated using the Sullivan’s method. We adjusted for hours worked and stratified by gender and educational level. RESULTS: Working-hours adjusted HWLE at age 50 increased in women and men from 4.52 years (95% CI 4.42 to 4.62) in 2001–2005 to 6.88 years (95% CI 6.78 to 6.98) in 2016–2020 and from 7.54 years (95% CI 7.43 to 7.65) to 9.36 years (95% CI 9.25 to 9.46), respectively. Moreover, UHWLE also rose with the proportion of working life spent in good SRH (health ratio) remaining largely stable. At age 50, educational differences in HWLE between the lowest and highest educational groups increased over time in women and in men from 3.72 to 4.99 years and from 4.06 to 4.40 years, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We found evidence for an overall increase but also for substantial educational differences in working-hours adjusted HWLE, which widened between the lowest and highest educational group over time. Our findings suggest that policies and health prevention measures at workplace should be more focused on workers with low levels of education in order to extend their HWLE.