Health status as a factor of labor activity of the retirement-age population

Demographic aging has become one of the key challenges for most of the developed countries of the world in the 21st century. Aging is an evolutionary and irreversible process, therefore the countries facing it are forced to restructure their policies, taking into account the transformation of the age structure of the population. This fact contributed to the development of ideas of realizing the resource potential of this socio-demographic group, in particular, of increasing its labor activity. The complex of internal and external factors influences the labor activity of the people of the retirement age, determinative of which is health. The Vologda region belongs to the regions of Russia with the «old» age structure. This fact actualizes the issue of studying health potential as a factor of labor activity of the elderly in the region. The purpose of this article was to analyze the objective indicators of health of the retirement-age population and to identify the features of its subjective parameters among working and non-working pensioners in order to determine the impact of these factors on their labor activity. The authors has established that the life expectancy of citizens of the retirement age has grown significantly since the beginning of the implementation of the active demographic policy in Russia, mainly due to a decrease in mortality from diseases of the circulatory system. According to the sociological monitoring (performed by Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian Academy of Sciences) the subjective health parameters of this category of citizens have also improved: the proportion of people with chronic diseases has decreased and the share of positive self-assessments of health has increased. The analysis of respondents' answers in the context of working and non-working people of the retirement age allowed us to identify significant differences in the self-assessments of health, self-protection settings of these categories and to create a kind of «portrait» of their health. Therefore when developing measures to preserve and promote public health, special attention should be given to the «portrait» of health of working and non-working pensioners.