Cognitive ability and labour force participation of people aged 50+ in the selected European countries

Maja Rynko, Educational Research Institute (IBE)
Marta Palczynska, Educational Research Institute (IBE)

Cognitive decline is often seen as one of the main aspects of aging. The ageing of population in many countries enforces structural changes resulting in a longer period of economic activity. Therefore, understanding the causes and factors that can prevent a cognitive decline becomes even more important nowadays. The SHARE data allows to analyze a set of measures on cognitive abilities. On the country level we observe large differences between the average cognitive abilities. Countries with higher employment rates perform better on the cognitive test and in these countries cognitive decline is also slower. Additionally, level of education explains a big part of the variability in the cognitive results, however, even after accounting for differences in the education structure, the differences in cognitive scores between countries still persist. On the individual level the positive relation between active lifestyle and the cognitive ability should be emphasized.