Favorable Environments, Cognitive Development, and Potential for Remaining Employed

Measures taken, in many OECD countries, for encouraging senior citizen job-activeness, are faced with a variety of obstacles. Among these, the precariousness of health at the end of one’s career, for certain categories of employees, has a significant role to play. This precariousness is tangible through a variety of statistical indicators of a medical nature, such as occupational accidents, work-related illnesses, or fitness and unfitness restrictions declared by occupational practitioners. However, if these signs of precarious health are still widely imperceptible, what can be said for health variables which are more uncommon and not as specifically medical, such as cognitive resources? The latter do not presently benefit from indicators that are as clear-cut or as acknowledged as physical factors for expressing difficulties at the end of the career. In this article, we first of all define what these cognitive resources cover and we illustrate that their productive and gratifying solicitation in work is a fundamental factor for encouraging senior citizen job-activeness. We then illustrate which past (exposure to pathogenic agents, work organization structures, training and work backgrounds) and present working conditions are liable to make these resources unavailable or even more difficult or taxing to generate during the final part of the career. The assumption developed throughout this article shows that cognitive resources are just as likely to be worn out as physical resources. Certain working conditions can have a long-term disabling effect on these resources, and can sustainably modify one’s ability to react, both in the workplace and externally. The research results illustrating this assumption are principally reproduced from the VISAT study (Aging, Health, Work).