Age has become a crucial variable in Polish policy in the last several years. Inspired by the European Union’s Europe 2020 strategy of ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth,’ and in light of Poland’s bleak demographic outlook and continued out-migration of young people, the country’s own development plans hinge heavily on ‘active ageing’ and participation of older workers as essential for social and economic sustainability in the long term. To what extent are the measures currently pursued or proposed for the near future achievable and sufficient? In engaging with this question, the paper identifies a number of key (gendered) tensions which are not adequately addressed by Poland’s approach to active aging. Stemming from the country’s de facto labour market realities (discrimination being one issue), as well as its organization of care (which is largely carried out within the family, mostly by women, and is unpaid), these tensions are used to reveal major mismatches between social and economic policy objectives, existing institutional infrastructure, and labour market conditions. Using a social reproduction perspective, the paper argues that the success of active aging policies in Poland is tied to, among others, a wholesale rethinking and rearticulation of how the unpaid work of care is organized, valued, and how it is shared within the family, and between the family and other institutions, including the state. The paper urges that failure to adequately grapple with these questions will not only make active aging difficult to implement in Poland, but may have more significant social and economic sustainability repercussions in the long-term.
