Introduction

The modern debate on age discrimination has in part been driven by the powerful argument that older people in advanced industrial societies now enjoy better health status than any previous generation. Intuitively, it would seem obvious that this must be so, and there appears to be much supporting evidence. For example, the economic historian Dora Costa, comparing Union Army records from the USA and recent health surveys, concludes that the health of Americans improved ‘remarkably’ over the course of the twentieth century, owing to the reduction in infectious diseases and occupational hazards, and that functional limitations among older men declined. In both Britain and the USA, death rates have fallen steadily over the past century, and life expectancy at birth has risen dramatically. Most adults can now expect to live healthy, active lives until aged well into their seventies.

‘Working capacity’ must, therefore, have improved, making it even more morally objectionable than ever to deny older people the right to employment, and a waged income higher than could be produced by any pension scheme. Improvements in survival rates should have increased the heterogeneity in health status that becomes more pronounced with the ageing process. It follows, therefore, that rigorous performance appraisal should be used to grade older workers according to their varying degrees of working capacity, rather than the crude age proxies employed in mandatory retirement policies.

Adding force to this argument is the changing nature of work.