The Health of Older People in Places project: an asset for social and economic improvement for all

Speaker: Dr Emily Murray is Senior Research Fellow at University College London's Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. She considers herself a social epidemiologist, with a focus of examining effects of where people reside across their life course on their health and well-being. She is currently leading the Health Foundation funded project, "Health of Older People in Places", a research project focusing on whether the proportion of older individuals in a place with good health is associated with better labour market-related social and economic outcomes in those places.

Abstract: Evidence shows that older people who live in more deprived areas are more likely to retire early and/or take up a disability pension. The health of people who live in these places has been cited as one of the main reasons for these geographic differences in outcomes after leaving employment. This suggests that if a higher proportion of people in a place had better health, those older people would be able to stay in the labour market for longer, and local economies would benefit economically and socially from the extended working lives of residents. This presentation presents preliminary findings from an evidence review & quantitative analysis to show which measures of the health of the older population in a given place, at which geographic scale(s), should be used to promote retention of older persons in the labour market.