Inequality and Frailty in Older Adults: a Comparison Among Four European Countries with Different Ageing Context

This paper investigates the association between work trajectories and frailty in later life in four ageing contexts (AAI index): Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy and Poland.Data of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is used to create the frailty index and linear regression models are applied to assess the association between frailty condition and work trajectories of 6187 women and men, aged between 50 and 74 years old.The findings underline that women experience worse frailty than men in all countries. Having precarious work trajectories is detrimental to individuals' health everywhere, but it becomes even worse for Danish men and Polish men and women. The ageing context (AAI index) is not associated with health inequalities in older people. We suggest that further research should explore more in detail the mechanisms linking job insecurity to psycho-social risks as possible determinants of frailty, taking into account differences at the national level.