Life expectancy has increased a lot in the last half century all over the world, and this is a positive fact. Italy is one of the countries where the greatest progress has been made. These have been accompanied by a significant reduction in the birth rate so that today in Italy about 20% of the population is over 65 years of age.
And this percentage is expected to rise to around 30% within the next 10-15 years. The increase in life expectancy is a great advance of modern industrial societies, but this now leads to health and economic problems that need to be addressed with clear and innovative ideas to ensure that the lengthening of life is also an increase in ” healthy life".
The issue has been dealt with internationally for years and many countries have developed policies to achieve this goal. The World Health Organization has outlined an aging strategy, referred to as "active ageing" to enhance the role of the elderly within society.
All the research carried out also in Italy, for example that of the CGIL, show that one of the main problems of the elderly is the loss of their role in society, loneliness, not feeling useful and inserted into the fabric of social relationships. This, as Professor Vergani, an illustrious gerontologist and author with the journalist Giangiacomo Schiavi of a beautiful book interview entitled "Still young to be old", explains, aggravates the problems, and therefore the costs, of the elderly's health care.
On the other hand, the enhancement of the role of the elderly as a value and resource of society also favors the maintenance of people in good health as well as being an important advantage for increasing the productivity of the entire economic system, which must be able to exploit all its components without leaving a percentage of people on the margins which, as has been said soon, could represent around 30% of the entire population.
With this initiative, which moreover is part of a trend that has been attracting the attention of all political forces for some time (the Hon Binetti presented a bill that has already been examined in the commission, but the issue has been studied both by Prof. Treu and by 'on Tinagli to cite just a few experts in the field) the government wants to stimulate the introduction, immediately, perhaps in the same finance law, of some new rules to encourage the use of the elderly both in voluntary work and in the productive sectors. All without costs for the public budget, or with very low costs, which could moreover be more than offset by savings in the health sector and, in general, by the increase in productivity of the system.
We are not entering the field of social security here, that is, we are not talking about either the reduction or the raising of the retirement age since we are asking ourselves the problem of what to make the pensioner do once he has retired from work even if the retirement age is it is moving forward in the years but, thank goodness, we get there (except for categories more worn out by heavy work) generally in good health and with the possibility of still being useful to society.
Nor do we believe that the contrast between young people and the elderly in the workplace is true in the sense that the affirmations, which are often heard even from authoritative personalities, according to which the permanence of the elderly at work would take away places for young people, are absolutely not confirmed by studies economic and social insights. The problem of young people depends on the low productivity of the system which fails to value people, so much so that the experiments of "generational relay" which have also been attempted in Italy, have not given interesting results.
To try to initiate a positive change of pace on the possibility of using the experiences of the elderly, we have proposed, for example, the possibility of promoting the transfer of knowledge to the younger generations with specific regulations, especially in the context of craft activities, but also in those of industry and the tertiary sector. Furthermore, facilitations are requested for third sector companies in order to be able to use the elderly through voluntary work. Overall, there is no thought of hiring these people but simply of the possibility of paying a modest reimbursement of expenses for activities that should in any case be part-time, obviously exempt from taxes and social security contributions.
Finally, it seems important to us that the Government review the ban on retirees from providing consultancy to the public sector in any form. It would be appropriate to be able to use the experience of these subjects, perhaps not in the administration of origin to avoid abuses, in non-operational roles and with a salary cap that is even quite low in order to avoid the unpleasant favoritism of the past.
