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Nuffield Foundation is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social wellbeing. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare and Justice. It also funds student programmes that provide opportunities for young people to develop skills in quantitative and scientific methods. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-funder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Ada Lovelace Institute. The Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation.

Key findings1 The biggest impact on incomes of the increase in the state pension age from 65 to 66 is simply that 65-year-olds lost -on average -state pension income worth around £142 per week in 2020-21. This reduction in state pension income was much larger than the overall increase in earnings arising from around 9% of 65-year-olds delaying their retirement until they reached the new state pension age.2 Accounting for all forms of income, including state pensions, earnings, other benefits, private pensions and investment incomes, the increase in the state pension age pushed down the net income of 65-year-olds by an average of £108 per week. This is an average, and many will have seen bigger reductions in their incomes, while those who remained in full-time work as a result of the reform actually received a higher total income than if the state pension age had remained at 65.3 The reduced payments of state pensions -and the higher direct tax payments resulting from the increase in the state pension age -boosted the public finances by around £4.9 billion per year. This is the counterpart to the reductions in household incomes caused by the reform. This exchequer gain is equivalent to around ¼% of national income and almost 5% of public spending on state pensions. 4 The reductions in household incomes have had a particularly important effect on lower-income households: they have caused significant increases in income poverty rates among 65-year-olds. The reform caused absolute income poverty rates (after accounting for housing costs) among 65-year-olds to climb to 24%, some 14 percentage points higher than -or more than double -the 10% that we estimate it would have been had the state pension age remained at 65.

Longer working lives offer many benefits, but achieving these can pose challenges for individuals, employers and policymakers. In order to support people in their 50s and 60s to remain in paid work for longer, it is imperative that we have a good picture of what paid work looks like at older ages, and how that might evolve in future. The desired working patterns of older workers -in terms of their hours of work, the form of their employment or the tasks they undertake at work -may be quite different from those of middle-aged or younger adults.An ageing population and higher employment rates for people in their 50s and 60s mean that patterns of work of older workers are an increasingly important issue for the country as a whole. Indeed, in 2019, around 10 million or 61% of 50-to 69year-olds were in paid work, meaning that this age group comprises almost a third (31%) of the workforce in the UK, up from just 21% in 1992.In this report, we provide fresh evidence on the nature of paid work at older ages, how employment patterns differ for people in different circumstances and how the situation is changing over time. In particular, we examine in depth the transitions that older workers make, both into and out of work and between different types of employment in the run-up to retirement.Having provided a comprehensive picture of working life for people in their 50s and 60s, we then examine the implications of our findings for some key issues facing older workers in the labour market in the coming years, including which groups might be of particular concern in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These issues are important not only for the individuals themselves, but for policymakers who are seeking to encourage people into longer and more fulfilling working lives, for employers who would benefit from employing them, and for civil society organisations and government agencies interested in assisting older people in finding productive work that allows them to balance their work and personal lives. Changing patterns of work at older ages  The Institute for Fiscal Studies, June 2021 5 Key findings1 There are likely to be significant challenges for many people in their 50s and 60s finding new jobs after the end of the furlough scheme. Older workers, particularly those aged over 65, have been more likely to be furloughed than middle-aged workers -at the end of April 2021, 14% of workers over 65 were furloughed, compared with 10% of those aged 40-49. There may well be significant numbers of older jobseekers in coming months.2 There are a number of reasons that finding new work may be challenging for people in their 50s and 60s. Most older workers do not have much recent experience of searching for work: Over twothirds (69%) of 55-year-old workers have been with their employer for more than five years. Only 4% of older workers typically change employer in a single year. Older workers are also less likely than younger workers to change occupation, which may be necessary if vacancies are not available in their current line of wor...