Over-employed older women,
though, leave the labor market earlier due to a lack of gradual retirement opportunities with the
current employer. This is especially true for women working full-time. Since women working
part-time may be less concerned with a lower quality bridge job, they may be able to adjust
hours more easily. These results suggest that more °exible working hours could prolong the
working lives of older women. However, this paper provides some explorative evidence that
total labor supply of older workers would actually be lower if hours were more °exible: the
increase in labor supply due to prolonged work is cancelled out by a reduction in working hours
of the over-employed workers. Hence °exibility in working hours does not seem to be a suitable
instrument for dealing with the challenge of workforce ageing, as has often been suggested.
Possibly, increasing the o±cial retirement age as was recently suggested is more e®ective in
increasing older workers' total labor supply. However, if the participation of older workers on
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the labor market is considered to be more important than their actual contribution in terms
of working hours, e.g. due to positive e®ects on psychological well-being or social welfare,
increasing possibilities for gradual retirement in good-quality jobs may be desirable. It is left
for future research to quantify the e®ect of hours constraints on the total number of hours
worked by older workers.