More Older Workers

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 8

More Older Workers

AUCKLAND, Feb. 16. The problem of the older worker was one of conspicuous economic importance, Professor S. Griew, of the psychology department, University of Otago, told the Science Congress today.

“It is now quite well known that the proportion of older people in most developed, industrialised countries is increasing,” he said. “Very

nearly one-eighth of the population of New Zealand is aged 60 or over, and more critically perhaps, about one-

third of our labour force is over 45 years of age. “An ageing population means, among other things, that an increasing proportion of older people is going to be economically dependent upon productivity of a decreasing proportion of younger people.” If, as was suspected, capacity for certain types of work decreased as a person grew older, then it was at

least possible that the increasing number of older people in work forces would mean a decline in over-all efficiency, he said.

Recent studies of the effects of age upon man’s purely physical capacity to work were somewhat disturbing.

One suggested the older worker would become fatigued to an extent which would render him liable to making all sorts of mistakes, thereby contributing to losses of productivity. Evidence suggested their work suffered more in conditions of poor lighting and extremes in temperature than that of the young. “Sensory losses, as was well known, were quite severe in later life and if one had only the laboratory findings to go on one would predict very severe incapacity in the factory. However, in the reallife situation of the factory they seem to be not nearly so great a handicap as one would expect,” he said.