Age and Cohort Change (ACC)

Understanding the links between aging and workforce productivity with the goal of improving senior workers' skills is critical to countries with aging populations. As how a population ages is influenced by more than biology, this five-year project is examining the relationships of skills and work performance with beliefs and attitudes. 

Productivity measured against the biological age of a workforce is one aspect of the project, but it is not a straightforward comparison. Countries with active populations, for example, tend to have older people with higher skill levels than countries with sedentary populations. Lifestyle can make a population “effectively younger” than its biological age, says IIASA researcher and project leader Vegard Skirbekk.

A population’s attitudes about values such as religion, education, and family structure influence behavior, which, in turn, can influence workplace performance.

Religion (and religiosity), as well as education, strongly influence fertility levels, which can influence whether a particular set of cultural values will be passed to younger generations or simply fade away. By building databases on current attitudes and beliefs, the researchers are developing scenarios of likely changes in the whole world through the year 2050.

The study is also incorporating the flow of migrants into Europe, which affects the distribution of skills and beliefs depending on the migrants’ home countries and their age, education. and religious backgrounds.

The project’s goal is to create databases and initiate research that will allow projections of European workforce changes in coming decades and suggest policies to improve the skills and performance of senior workers.

Last edited: 16 January 2013