Unemployment Compensation and Older Workers

Abstract

About the Institute also frequently carry heavy family responsibilities and have the least ability to recoup and prepare adequately for their old age if disaster strikes.How well we respond to older workers will, to a considerable degree, dictate how much and what kind of assistance these same indi viduals will require when they leave the workforce.Very little research is available to guide employers, employees, and policymakers through this period.This volume based on the National Academy of Social Insurance's 12th annual conference, "Ensuring Health and Income Security for an Aging Workforce," which was held in Washington, D.C., on January 26-27, 2000 begins to fill that gap.The conference kicked off a multiyear, interdisciplinary study of the social insurance problems of our aging workforce.A group of papers were commissioned by the Academy about the implications of an aging workforce for various social insurance pro grams in the coming decades.Those papers are presented here, together with the comments of the assigned conference reactors.While authors were offered a chance to revise their remarks, the edited papers in this volume reflect the content of the conference very well.The papers in this volume provide a foundation for discussion of the social insurance challenges affecting these older workers and the pol icy issues that will be raised as they move toward retirement.A critical feature of the Academy's work is its broad approach to social policy questions.This is essential to any effort to address the impact and needs of older workers; otherwise, efforts to deal with issues and problems related to older workers that appear in one pro gram can lead to dislocations in another program or create gaps in pro tection that had not been there before.For example, policies that make social security early retirement benefits less generous or that increase the age of "early" retirement will likely lead to greater use of disability programs.Policies designed to limit access to disability programs may put pressure on workers' compensation and unemployment insurance programs or may increase the number of individuals without adequate health care insurance.Hence, policymakers must consider the implica tions of any single policy change for the entire social safety net in order to mitigate the economic risks associated with exiting the labor force at older ages.In the first section of this volume, four papers chart the current landscape of older workers' access to and use of health insurance, 4 Editors' Introduction 6 Editors' Introduction they had not lost their previous jobs.Finally, although the findings are less dramatic, displaced workers may use up their savings to cover lost earnings, and job loss may also lead to substantial reductions in pen sion benefits.