Health, disability and work: Patterns for the working age population

The Netherlands has been very successful in raising the participation rate of older workers in the past decade, and recent policies are expected to lead to further increases. Understanding the relation between health, work and disability insurance programs is therefore of the utmost importance for policymakers. Pilar García-Gómez (Erasmus University Rotterdam and Netspar), Hans-Martin von Gaudecker (VU University Amsterdam and Netspar) and Maarten Lindeboom (VU University Amsterdam, IZA, and Netspar) summarize in this paper the evidence on how population health translates into limited work ability, and into enrolment in disability insurance. After reviewing the recent Dutch experience, the paper provides some exploratory analyses of novel cohort-level data, closing with some remarks targeted at policymakers.