The aging population of the United States has significant implications for the workforce - challenging what it means to work and to retire in the U.S. In fact, by 2030, one-fifth of the population will be over age 65. This shift has significant repercussions for the economy and key social programs. Due to medical advancements and public health improvements, recent cohorts of older adults have experienced better health and increasing longevity compared to earlier cohorts. These improvements in health enable many older adults to extend their working lives. While higher labor market participation from this older workforce could soften the potential negative impacts of the aging population over the long term on economic growth and the funding of Social Security and other social programs, these trends have also occurred amidst a complicating backdrop of widening economic and social inequality that has meant that the gains in health, improvements in mortality, and access to later-life employment have been distributed unequally. Understanding the Aging Workforce: Defining a Research Agenda offers a multidisciplinary framework for conceptualizing pathways between work and nonwork at older ages. This report outlines a research agenda that highlights the need for a better understanding of the relationship between employers and older employees; how work and resource inequalities in later adulthood shape opportunities in later life; and the interface between work, health, and caregiving. The research agenda also identifies the need for research that addresses the role of workplaces in shaping work at older ages, including the role of workplace policies and practices and age discrimination in enabling or discouraging older workers to continue working or retire. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary 1 Introduction Part I 2 The Emerging Older Workforce 3 Work and Retirement Pathways Part II 4 Individual and Social Factors That Influence Employment and Retirement Transitions 5 Workplace and Job Factors 6 Age Discrimination, One Source of Inequality 7 The Labor Market for Older Workers 8 Public Policy Part III 9 A Research Agenda to Promote Understanding of Employment among Older Workers References Appendix A: Meeting Agendas Appendix B: Committee Biosketches

The past century has witnessed remarkable advances in life expectancy in the United States and throughout the world. In 2010, however, progress in life expectancy in the United States began to stall, despite continuing to increase in other high-income countries. Alarmingly, U.S. life expectancy fell between 2014 and 2015 and continued to decline through 2017, the longest sustained decline in life expectancy in a century (since the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919). The recent decline in U.S. life expectancy appears to have been the product of two trends: (1) an increase in mortality among middle-aged and younger adults, defined as those aged 25-64 years (i.e., "working age"), which began in the 1990s for several specific causes of death (e.g., drug- and alcohol-related causes and suicide); and (2) a slowing of declines in working-age mortality due to other causes of death (mainly cardiovascular diseases) after 2010. High and Rising Mortality Rates among Working Age Adults highlights the crisis of rising premature mortality that threatens the future of the nation's families, communities, and national wellbeing. This report identifies the key drivers of increasing death rates and disparities in working-age mortality over the period 1990 to 2017; elucidates modifiable risk factors that could alleviate poor health in the working-age population, as well as widening health inequalities; identifies key knowledge gaps and make recommendations for future research and data collection to fill those gaps; and explores potential policy implications. After a comprehensive analysis of the trends in working-age mortality by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and geography using the most up-to-date data, this report then looks upstream to the macrostructural factors (e.g., public policies, macroeconomic trends, social and economic inequality, technology) and social determinants (e.g., socioeconomic status, environment, social networks) that may affect the health of working-age Americans in multiple ways and through multiple pathways. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary PART I 1 Introduction 2 U.S. Mortality in an International Context 3 U.S. Trends in All-Cause Mortality Among Working-Age Adults 4 U.S. Trends in Cause-Specific Mortality Among Working-Age Adults 5 U.S. Mortality Data: Data Quality, Methodology, and Recommendations PART II 6 A Framework for Developing Explanations of Working-Age Mortality Trends 7 Opioids, Other Drugs, and Alcohol 8 Suicide 9 Cardiometabolic Diseases 10 The Relationship Between Economic Factors and Mortality PART III 11 Implications for Policy and Research References Appendix A: Mortality Data Analyses: Review Process and Detailed Mortality Rate Tables Appendix B: Meeting Agendas Appendix C: Biographical Sketches