To leave or not to leave: retirement intentions and retirement behaviour (original) (raw)

Work-related factors as predictors in the retirement decision-making process of older workers in the Netherlands

Ageing and Society, 2013

ABSTRACTThis article examines work-related factors and their impact on the retirement decision-making process. We particularly focus on organisational human resources policies and normative climate regarding retirement. Organisations create opportunities and conditions for career extension via their personnel instruments. The normative climate may encourage or discourage retirement. We use a ten-year follow-up study among 1,458 older employees in the Netherlands aged 50–59 at baseline. Results reveal that older workers are sensitive to social approval earned from their co-workers and supervisor. A social climate that supports working up to higher ages is an important requisite for reducing the attractiveness of the early retirement option. Retirement intentions, formed in the years prior to retirement, are shaped by workplace norms and supervisors' attitudes. Results indicate that in order to delay retirement, policy initiatives cannot be reduced to altering financial restrictio...

Working Conditions and Early Retirement: A Prospective Study of Retirement Behavior

Research on Aging, 2005

occupations. It combines survey data for estimates of job strains, census data for occupations, and income and social insurance/security data, for the transition from work to retirement for 18,847 Norwegian employees between the ages of 60 and 67. Retirement was identified by a drop in work-related income and studied both jointly and separately for disability and nondisability retirement. Data were analyzed using logistic regression (competing risk) "duration" models. Findings indicate that disability retirement is related to physical job strains. Among men, both pathways of early retirement are related to low autonomy in job tasks. Furthermore, psychological job stress may reduce non-disability retirement. The findings are discussed in relation to (a) the prospect of reducing early retirement by changing working conditions and (b) the distributional impacts of actuarial principles in pension systems.

Health- and Age-Related Workplace Factors as Predictors of Preferred, Expected, and Actual Retirement Timing: Findings from a Swedish Cohort Study

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021

To address the challenges of demographic aging, governments and organizations encourage extended working lives. This study investigates how individual health- and age-related workplace factors contribute to preferred, expected and actual retirement timing, as well as to the congruency between preferences vs. expectations, and preferences vs. actual retirement. We used data from a representative Swedish longitudinal sample comprising 4058 workers aged 50–64, with follow-up data regarding actual retirement timing available for 1164 respondents. Multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that later preferred, expected, and actual retirement timing were, to different extent, influenced by better health, an age-friendly workplace and feeling positive regarding the future at work. Emotional exhaustion, age-related inequalities at work and experiencing aging as an obstacle increased the likelihood of preferring to retire earlier than one expected to, over retiring at the time one exp...

Work or retirement? Exit routes for Norwegian elderly

Applied Economics, 2000

Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor markets, (2) internationalization of labor markets and European integration, (3) the welfare state and labor markets, (4) labor markets in transition, (5) the future of work, and (6) general labor economics.

Early Retirement behaviour for men and women in Denmark 1

2001

The focus of the paper is to analyse why a large fraction of elderly people choose to retire early instead of staying in the labour force until reaching the official pension age and to focus on how gender and marital status influences the retirement decision. Denmark has a long tradition of high female labour force participation and we already observe an increase in female exit to early retirement. Furthermore, it turns out that a high fraction of elderly are living as single, especially elderly women. This emphasizes the importance of not only investigating gender differences but also analysing the impact of marital status, both in terms of prediction of future accessions to retirement schemes, but also in terms of obtaining more knowledge about retirement behaviour of women. With access to individual data, a structural model which is directly based on the individual decision of labour supply is formulated. The main result from the estimations show that the largest differences are ...

Retirement: Does Individual Unemployment Matter? Evidence from Danish Panel Data 1980–2009

The paper studies the impact from variations in unemployment on retirement among older workers. We integrate unemployment variations with early retirement programs and other pathways out of the labor force. The paper describes retirement programs, policy changes, labor force participation among older workers and presents a new estimate of the trend in the average age of retirement. Individual panel data for the last 25 years are used in estimations of the impact from individual unemployment on the retirement decision. Unemployment is found highly significant and quantitatively important for the retirement decision. We conclude that there is a clear risk of a cyclical downturn resulting in a more long run reduction in productive capacity with negative consequences for the budget of the public sector.

Work-related factors and early retirement intention: a study of the Danish eldercare sector

The European Journal of Public Health, 2012

The work should be attributed to the National Research Centre for the Working Environment Background: Western countries are experiencing an ageing and shrinking workforce in the eldercare sector. This study investigated whether 12 different work-related factors are associated with early retirement intentions of employees in the Danish eldercare sector. We tested whether three hypotheses explained the increase of early retirement intention: (i) high job demands (four factors) and low resources (four factors); (ii) low job attitude (three factors); and (iii) high physical strain (one factor). Methods: We included 2444 employees (aged 45-57 years) from two waves (T1 and T2) from a prospective study. Multinomial logistic regression models showed whether 12 work-related factors (T1) were associated with early retirement intention (T2); very early retirement intention and early retirement intention vs. normal retirement intention. Results: Only 14% of the participants wished to retire at the normal retirement age (65 years or older). High physical strain [hypothesis (iii)] and low and normal affective organizational commitment [hypothesis (ii)] were associated with very early retirement intention. None of the other work-related factors associated with early retirement intention. Conclusions: Future interventions should focus on reducing physical strain and increase or maintain affective organizational commitment among employees in the eldercare sector to postpone retirement.

The impact of welfare state institutions and values on early retirement behaviour: A comparative panel study in Europe using the ECHP and EVS

None, 2008

This paper focuses on evaluating the effects of welfare state institutions and cultural values on the retirement behaviour of senior workers in 13 European countries. A novelty of our approach is to examine the effect of both institutional and cultural determinants on the retirement decision by matching the ECHP and the EVS (1999 wave) at the group level. Since our representative sample consists of senior workers from the age of 45 to the age one year prior to eligibility for statutory pensions, we cover most of the transitions out of the labour market including those under the threshold used in previous studies. Another contribution of our paper is the construction of an index of flexibility of the pension system while taking into account the characteristics of the different pillars. Using discrete choice modeling enabled us to include alternative exit routes such as unemployment or disability in our multinomial logit models. The outcomes confirm the impact of the welfare-state institutions and cultural values on early retirement behaviour. A more flexible and generous a system is encouraging the old workers to exit earlier from the labour market. The group values have a positive effect on the early retirement decision, which corroborates with the previous research in behavioural economics, with the fact that individual behaviour is influenced by the effect of social norms in the society, according to which it is still commonly accepted in these years that older people leave the labour market at relative early ages. Across countries, there are significant differences in the early retirement patterns.

Early Retirement and Company Characteristics

2006

Early retirement decisions derived from a structural model with economic incentives and firm workforce changes, are estimated on Norwegian linked household and firm data. For households in which the wife is the first to become eligible for early retirement, the impact on early retirement of a reduction in the firm workforce is stronger relative to economic incentives than is the case for men, in particular in the private sector. Both for men and women, also an expansion of the firm workforce implies a higher retirement probability.The eligibility age in the early retirement programme has gradually been reduced from 66 in 1989 to 62 in 1998. We find that the economic incentives relative to the push factor have become more important, both for men and women, the lower the eligibility age is.