Institutional Re-Employment Determinants for the Elderly Unemployed – an International Comparison

Recent unemployment research mainly focused on youth unemployment while the unemployment of the elderly lost its prominent role. However, statistics show that persons over 50 years are still a vulnerable labour market group. While they tend to become unemployed less often, once unemployed they face severe re-employment difficulties resulting in longer unemployment durations. In the first quarter of 2015, 60% of all unemployed aged 50-74 in the EU 28 countries were unemployed for over a year. This is noticeably higher than the overall rate (15-74 years) which averaged out at 48%. But the official statistics also show that there are large country-specific differences in the long-term unemployment rates of the elderly: The rates range from 33% in Sweden to 83% in Greece. These big discrepancies cannot solely be explained by individual characteristics. Though (long-term) unemployment can be largely attributed to gender, educational background or the employment history, the highly varying unemployment rates across Europe suggest that there are also institutional settings – e.g. unemployment benefits, pension regulations and the economic state – that influence the re-employment likelihood of older individuals.
Therefore, this study aims to identify crucial institutional determinants of (long-term) unemployment for people above 50 years. Using qualitative Fuzzy-Set analysis, institutional settings of ten European countries will be investigated. Those ten countries will consist of two countries for each regime of Esping-Andersen’s extended welfare typology (Conservative, Social-democratic, Liberal, Southern and Eastern), thereby covering a wide range of institutional arrangements. The strengths of Fuzzy-Set analysis lie in the focus on the individual case and the equifinality principle, because it considers that different institutional combinations and path-dependent trajectories can lead to different or even similar outcomes. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how different institutional settings, and especially their combination, influence the (long-term) unemployment rates in the chosen countries.