Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 57 
Table 11: Time spent for household and family care, men/women –  Eurostat105 
 
Ageing can have positive consequences on safety and health. 106 Depending on the job profile,  age 
might be an advantage if work experience and expertise are of high relevance. 107  The biggest 
disadvantages are higher rates of physical functional limitations, possibly comorbi dities and connected 
to this a higher rate of health- related absences. There are evident differences between older and 
younger aged workers regarding length of absences (not frequency) and disabilities, that is, not only 
recognised serious disabilities  but also minor restrictions can be sufficient to stop a physically 
demanding job.108 Manual workers of higher age run in competition with younger workers and mostly 
cannot perform physically exhaustive work in the same way as younger workers. From a preventive 
point of view, age-related limitations should as far as possible be mitigated by workplace adaptation and 
help tools.  
The higher accident rates of young workers are visible in the Eurostat ESAW statistics. In 2019 , 
the standardised incident rate for non- fatal accidents of workers between 25 and 54 was at 2, 469 for 
workers under 25, and at 1,667 for workers between 25 and 54 years, that is, ca. 48% higher.109  
 
Table 12: Non-fatal and fatal accidents at work – incidence rate by age – Eurostat110