L'invecchiamento delle forze di lavoro. Lo stato del dibattito in Europa

This collection of essays was planned with the aim to introduce to 2012, which has been declared “European Year of Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations” as a sign of how current demographic changes have risen to the status of an overriding topic in the agenda of European Union’s policy makers. \r\nIn many respects, the European Year is the landing point of a route of nearly thirty years made of analyses, evelopment of concepts and definition of policies and strategies to support the management of a phenomenon which has been known in most of its implications since its first appearance: the “baby boom”, occurring in the midst of those glorious thirty years after the post-war reconstruction that all the democracies of Western Europe met. During this time, much of what had to be studied has been studied and knowledge about the outcomes, threats and opportunities entailed by demographic ageing has grown considerably. Much of the game of demographic ageing is being played on the ground of the inclusiveness of employment systems (as the European Employment Strategy and Europe 2020 Strategy keep on showing), the qualification of a workforce whose average age is growing, the postponement of transition to retirement, the redefinition of pension\r\nmodels and social/health care systems. Nonetheless, despite the progress made in understanding the phenomenon over the years, we still can detect a persistent lack of awareness on the part of the main actors involved in\r\nmanaging demographic change: namely, policy makers, social parties and the third sector. Given the complex and intricate picture of the questions raised by the advent of “ageing society”, this collection of papers focuses on a particular aspect, which is also among those most neglected by the current debate in Italy: the ageing of workforce, which is in itself an expression suggesting the advisability of extending for as long as possible active life and participation in the paid labour market.