Employed or self-employed - does it make a difference when you have a chronic illness?

Governments across the EU want us to work longer, but with age can also come chronic illnesses such as diabetes, arthritis and heart problems. This might make work in our later years more challenging so what can we do about that and does it make a difference if we are employed or self-employed?In our latest WorkLife Blog, Maria Fleischmann discusses her recently published research which provides insight into how a change of work pattern could be key to keeping older people in work.

The research, undertaken as part of the RENEWL project at UCL and published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health finds that after being diagnosed with a chronic illness, employed people felt the physical demands of their job increased whilst self-employed people reported the opposite. Employed people also found their level of autonomy at work dropped where for the self-employed it did not.

The research concludes that employers keen to hold on to older workers after they become ill may need to consider the levels of flexibility they can offer workers.
The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) provided the data for the study, which has followed a total of almost 9,000 over-50s since 2002.