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Income Security for Older Workers

Globally, levels of informal employment are higher among older workers. However, little attention is given to older workers’ patterns of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the contributions they make and have made to the community and economy.

WIEGO recognizes the significant contributions of older women and men in informal employment and their challenges in fulfilling their right to work and access to the labour market. As a response, WIEGO Social Protection Programme launched a pillar of work on Income Security for Older Workers, which understands older workers in informal employment as people who are contributing to household incomes and to care work, rather than as “the unproductive elderly”.

ActivitiesLatest Research

In Thailand, in March 2023, WIEGO organized a brainstorming session to answer the question, “What might a research study on older workers look like in Thailand?” The event, attended by HomeNet Thailand and experts from the Foundation of Thai Gerontology Research and Development Institute, Thammsat University and Chulalongkorn University, shaped the collaborative research project on older workers in informal employment in Thailand that commenced in 2024.

Other research has aimed to bolster the limited evidence base on older workers, informal employment and social protection.

ActivitiesPolicy Analysis and Engagements

WIEGO advocates at least a basic pension for older women and men, which would enable the choice to continue working or not, and the level of intensity of the work in which they engage. Particularly for older women and men who want to remain economically active, it is critical that the decent work agenda extends to them, too – providing greater opportunities, tackling discrimination, extending health care (including in the workplace), and improving representation for older people in processes of change.

WIEGO brings these policy demands in engagement mechanisms at both global and regional levels such as the OECD and USP2030 Policy Dialogue on Social Protection and Development, the British Society of Gerontology Conference on Ageing in an Unequal World, the ASEAN Regional Forum on Social Protection that Empowers Women and the UN High Level Political Forum.

  • A WIEGO Informal Economy: Social Protection podcast explores social protection needs for older workers in informal employment.
  • WIEGO contributed an article on older women workers in Southeast Asia’s informal economy to the ASEAN, the official magazine of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, highlightingWIEGO’s approach to supporting older workers in informal employment, especially in social protection.
  • Findings from Older Informal Workers in the COVID-19 Crisis informed a book chapter by HelpAge India on the theme of Build Back Better World for Older Women: Good Practices to Ensure Health and Income Security in the Post Pandemic Era.