The sociology of late working life

This chapter briefly describes the context shaping late working lives in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and identifies theoretical frameworks that sociologists have used to understand late working life. These include early theoretical approaches to understand ageing, from disengagement, activity, and more recently, successful/positive ageing theories to more recent critical approaches that include political economy, feminist, and life course frameworks. We then discuss recent empirical studies that explore topics related to later working, including extending working lives, the increasing precarity of late life work, blurred exits, the impact of gender, ageism and inequalities, the significance of health, the balance between paid and unpaid work and work-life balance and, finally, training, automation and digitalisation. We document some of the major findings in sociological research on later working lives. Finally, we consider future directions for sociological research in the rapidly changing landscape of late working life.