and replacement ), the council for work and income expects bottlenecks in education in the short term. the rapportage ouderen 2006 ( report on older people 2006 ) by the ministry of health, welfare and sport, shows that in 2003 the so - termed life expectancy without physical impairments of a 65 - year - old man was 77. 3 years, compared to 75 in 1989. for 65 - year - old women, these figures were 77. 4 and 74. 1 respectively. “ less welfare growth in the service economy ”, dnb quarterly bulletin, september 2005. will staying on in the workplace alleviate the impact of ageing on the labour market? yes, most definitely! for employers, it means that labour supply will not decrease as rapidly, making it easier for them to fill vacancies. and the bigger the working section of the population, the better the labour market for both employers and employees because of the lighter marginal tax burden. if more people continue working, not just until they turn 65 but afterwards too, and delay drawing the state old age pension, there would be less state old age pension claimants and more potential contributors. the level of contribution for the working part of the population would then be lower. so it works both ways. older people themselves benefit from prolonging their working lives as a means of safeguarding the sustainability of the pension system. for they enjoy higher disposable income. retaining older workers the reality is that labour participation among those aged between 55 and 64 is relatively low 6. and participation among the over - 65s is negligible, the reason being the various legal and socio - cultural impediments discouraging older people from working for longer than they generally do now. a major obstacle is that many collective labour agreements provide for termination of employment on reaching 65. it is subsequently quite unappealing – for both employer and employee – to enter into a new contract. having reached retirement age, the employee has much less financial incentive to work, because he is then entitled to a state old age pension as well as his supplementary pension benefits. for the employer, entering into an employment contract with someone over 65 represents a risk, seeing as he is obliged to offer all his employees occupational disability insurance. the employer may choose to place this risk with the employee insurance administration agency or to run it himself, possibly by taking out private insurance. if cheaper in their case, employers generally choose the latter option. this choice applies

of course absorb these by either raising contributions, or by letting benefits fall behind them. but such measures hit people directly in their pockets, and i think that better solutions are available to improve the sustainability of the pension system. one of these is to widen the contribution base through greater labour participation. there is still scope for widening participation in the netherlands, notably among women, youths from ethnic minorities, people with occupational disabilities and, most definitely, among older workers themselves. population ageing apart, higher participation is a good thing in itself. our prosperity will benefit from the optimum deployment of available workers. moreover, older people are staying active for longer, thanks to the higher life expectancy and good health care. they look after their grandchildren, perform voluntary work and play a full part in society. an obvious path is to stimulate older people to use their active attitude to life to stay on longer in the workplace. this would also reinforce the solidarity between working and non - working people. but let ’ s not go too far. employees in sectors such as construction, the fire brigade and the army have often started working at a very young age. it would not be reasonable to expect these groups to work for more than 50 years of their lives, whereas people in less demanding positions are hard pressed to work for 40 years. especially as these jobs are physically taxing. the collective labour agreements for such physically - taxing occupations generally arrange for pension funding that enables employees to stop work before reaching the statutory retirement age. that is understandable, and may continue on broadly the same lines as far as i am concerned. it is difficult to exactly determine what percentage of the labour force hold physically - taxing jobs, but in all likelihood, it would be reasonable and possible for the greater part of the labour force to prolong their careers. an additional factor is the structural decline in the share of physically - taxing jobs owing to the diminishing share of industry in our economy. this employment shift to services set in many years ago, but is still ongoing. in 1980, industry still accounted for 15 % of employment, but this share has now dwindled to less than 10 % 5. the share of construction in our economy remained stable over this period at around 5. 5 %. in education, the percentage of employees aged 55 - 64 is 19. 2 %, whereas the average rate is 11. 8 %. in addition, in its report vergrijzing en vervanging ( ageing