Why do you work?

For most of us, we hold a job down so we can pay bills, have a home, buy stuff. Some of us work because we like the social aspect.

For others, it's the challenge we love most about working.

And still, we think about retirement. After all, isn't that why you contribute to RRSPs?

Encore, by Marc Freedman. © 2007, Public Affairs Books $30; 255 pages, includes index.

In the new book Encore, by Marc Freedman, you'll learn how employers and employees are meeting the Golden Years with ideas that might be the answer to social insurance woes, the economy, and the workforce.

Retirement as a perk of age hasn't been around long. In the early 1900s, it was common to see older, better-paid workers dropped from payrolls in favour of lesser-paid, younger workers.

This often plunged the older worker into poverty. Government pension schemes were created, in large part, to remedy the problem.

Ask any Baby Boomer, and you'll hear doubts about those pensions today.

Will it be there for you when you want to retire? Doomsayers predict problems within the next generation. Will this change retirement?

Yes, Freedman says. First of all, why leave the workplace entirely? Just as we benefit the workplace, work benefits us. Studies show that actively engaged people live longer, healthier lives.

Freedman says that if soon-to-retire, mid-life employees are given more options, they might choose to work longer and differently. He envisions "bridge jobs" - short-term, part-time, low-or no-pay positions - created for a cadre of older workers to fill openings in retail and volunteer programs.

Such a program would give the "Encore Society" a chance to decide on and transition to the next phase of their working lives.

Businesses would benefit by having an eager pool of "bridge-job" workers. Social and volunteer programs could benefit from an abundance of experience.

And by keeping older employees on a payroll, the government gets tax money and younger workers get a hand in supporting the needy and those who truly can't work.

Freedman says you might know someone who has implemented these changes already. Encore workers are returning to school, refocusing skills, refinding dreams, and making a difference. In this book, he interviews people who switched jobs in mid-life and are happier than ever before, and he offers a way that you can do it, too.

Maybe.

Encore is an exciting book, but on second thought, there are a lot of elders out there who toil because they must. Would these ideas fit their lives, as well as the lives of those who work for fulfilment and not money? I'm not so sure.

Freedman admits that this whole shift in thinking is easiest for retirees who have enough money to live comfortably and don't need much or any more. Even though the premise is sound, that might put this book into perspective for an awful lot of readers.

Encore is a provocative book that might be a solution to many problems in today's economy.

(Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She can be reached at schlichenmeyer@businessedge.ca)