This issue of the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research contains a selection of papers that were presented at the conference ‘Health, Education, and Retirement over the Prolonged Life Cycle’, which was organised by the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and held in Vienna in November 2013. The conference was devoted to the socio-economic causes and consequences at both the individual and the societal level of the unprecedented increase in life expectancy over the past few decades. At the micro level, a better understanding is needed regarding the extent to which the increase in human life expectancy has been shaped by individual health behaviour, rather than by other socio-economic influences, and through which channels this happened. Conversely, it is important to understand better how the prolongation of the life cycle will shape individual behaviour. The conference focused on behaviour relating to health, education, and the supply of labour. Although generally perceived as a positive development, the increase in life expectancy also poses policy challenges for social security and the cohesion of society, given that different social groups benefit from rising longevity to varying degrees. Important questions have been raised about the macro consequences of the prolongation of the individual life cycle, not least because having an understanding of the underlying mechanisms will be crucial for assessing the extent to which retirement, health, and educational policies need to be reformed. The recognition that the design of reforms should be guided by an awareness of the potential effects of policies on individual life-cycle behaviour closes the circle of topics addressed in this volume.<
The remainder of this introduction sets the scene for the articles contained within this volume by presenting the editors’ (subjective and selective) take on the state of research regarding the link between longevity and individual life-cycle behaviour relating to health, education, and retirement
full text online (http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/7948-1inhalt)