Extended Working Life Policies Country Experiences: Chapter 8 Austria

This chapter deals with the labour market situation of older (50+)workers and pension policies in Austria, a country where gender differences are strongly pronounced over the entire lifecourse. The target of recent policies is not primarily to tackle the negative effects of the system for women, but to decrease pension costs by discouraging early retirement and inducing employers to keep and/or employ older workers. However, this will have some gendered effects since recent policy changes will increase women's lower legal retirement age stepwise (60) to match that of men(65) in 2033. Although caring time already partly contributes topension payments, this does not substantially decrease the large gender pension gap.