Older Self‐Employed Workers and Planning for the Future

Abstract

This study examined retirement expectations of the older self‐employed utilizing two theories: the normative anticipation of retirement and cumulative advantage theory. Two‐thirds of the older self‐employed had no retirement plans. Multinomial logistic regression showed that those with no retirement plans were more likely to be unmarried, in poorer physical health, with few resources, and more obligations, but they expected to live a long time. Job skills programs and managerial training could improve the financial well‐being of the older self‐employed and enable them to plan for retirement.

The retirement behaviour of the self-employed in Britain

“…Therefore it is not clear what would be gained by a policy that encouraged such workers to enter self-employment -a point that has added force as peripheral workers have also been identi…ed as the most di¢ cult to assist in unemployment-to-self-employment start-up programmes . A more promising route might be job skill programmes and managerial training programmes dedicated to self-employed workers speci…cally (Devaney and Kim, 2003).…”

Money, Work–Life Balance and Autonomy: Why do IT Professionals Choose Self-Employment?

“…On the other hand, a survey on 1,805 retired workers of Bell Canada concludes that lateral mobility in the last job-in contrast with vertical mobility-is inversely proportional to the choice of self-employment at the age of retirement (Singh and Verma 2003). Furthermore, according to Devaney and Kim (2003), self-employed workers often do not have pensions; consequently many have no choice but to stay on the labour market (Tremblay et al 2007b).…”

“…On the other hand, a survey on 1,805 retired workers of Bell Canada concludes that lateral mobility in the last job-in contrast with vertical mobility-is inversely proportional to the choice of self-employment at the age of retirement (Singh and Verma 2003). Furthermore, according to Devaney and Kim (2003), self-employed workers often do not have pensions; consequently many have no choice but to stay on the labour market (Tremblay et al 2007b).As Montgomery, Johnson and Faisal (Montgomery et al 2005) suggest, the availability of financial capital should not be neglected, since it is a key element to start up a business and to keep it running. On the other hand, the results of Galt and Moennig (1996) on British data, do not confirm that governmental support, as an economic incentive, can explain in itself the growing number of self-employed workers.…”

The Decision to Retire Early: Evidence from Private Service Sector in Thailand

“…Wang and Shultz's (2010) review of the literature on five corresponding theories on retirement as decision-making conceptualization is also used here and the results are illustrated in Table 1. These corresponding theories include rational choice theory (Hatcher, 2003;Gustman & Steinmeier, 1986;Quinn, Burkhauser, &Myers, 1990), image theory (Feldman, 1994;Beach &Frederickson, 1989), role theory (Talaga & Beehr, 1995;Ashforth, 2001;Moen, Dempster-McClain, & Williams, 1992;Brougham & Walsh, 2007), theory of planned behavior (Cron, Jackofsky, & Slocum, 1993;Ajzen, 1991;Adams & Beehr, 1998;Huuhtanen & Piispa, 1992;Shultz, Taylor, & Morrison, 2003;Wang, Zhan, Liu, & Shultz, 2008), and expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964;Kim, 2003;Belgrave & Haug, 1995;Cron, Jackofsky, & Slocum, 1993;DeVaney & Kim, 2003;Karpansalo, Manninen, Kauhanen, Lakka, & Salonen, 2004). Retirement decision-making is mostly involuntary, and the voluntariness of the retirement decision can be viewed as a boundary condition for applying an informed decision-making approach in testing predictors of the retirement decision (Gallo, Bradley, Siegel, & Kasl, 2000;Hanisch & Hulin, 1990;Shultz, Morton, & Weckerle (1998).…”