Working retirees in Europe: individual and societal determinants

Abstract

One of the solutions that could be used to resource the needs of ageing populations is the encouragement of individuals to extend working lives beyond retirement, often referred to as 'bridge employment'. Although previous studies provide important insights into individual determinants of bridge employment, there is scant research on the extent to which differences across countries and between genders exist and how these might be explained by economic and societal differences in the pension context. The determinants of participation in bridge employment are investigated among male and female retirees in 16 European countries. Multilevel models are estimated based on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe project. It was found that where there is high expenditure on pensions there is a lower likelihood of retirees participating in bridge jobs, while strong norms that support working past retirement are positively associated with bridge employment.

Ageing in Southern Europe. Emerging Perspectives and Challenges for Sociology

“…Among the institutional filters, we can also include the low levels of support for work following retirement that derives from the characteristics of the pension systems (Dingemans et al, 2017).…”

Socio-economic differences in retirement timing and participation in post-retirement employment in a context of a flexible pension age

“…Post-retirement employment refers to any type of employment after initial exit from the labour force among older people or after taking a statutory pension. Previous studies indicate that post-retirement employment is more common among those with higher education (Pleau, 2010;Larsen and Pedersen, 2013;Pleau and Shauman, 2013;Pettersson, 2014;Kanabar, 2015;Dingemans et al, 2017;Platts et al, 2019) and occupational class (Dingemans et al, 2016). Findings on the effects of various economic resources have been mixed.…”

Attitudes About Working Beyond Normal Retirement Age: The Role of Mandatory Retirement

“…In the Netherlands, virtually all wage-and-salary employees are covered by defined benefit pension plans and the state pension, leading to high pension replacement rates after normal retirement age (OECD, 2017a). This means there are hardly any older workers that need to continue working beyond normal retirement age to supplement their pension income, which in turn leads to a lower overall willingness to work beyond normal retirement age in the Netherlands (Dingemans et al, 2017). There is still a financial incentive to continue working beyond normal retirement age for national-level civil servants, since their net income increases substantially (due to lower taxes and receiving state pension) when they keep working.…”

“…As a result, older workers' employment participation rates and retirement ages have increased substantially. In addition to more participation before normal retirement age 1 , working beyond normal retirement age, either by continuing in the main 'career job' or by taking up a less demanding 'bridge job', is also increasingly prevalent (Dingemans et al, 2017;Pleau & Shauman, 2013). Although there has been some opposition to the policy reforms that have led to longer working lives, there is also evidence that current cohorts of employees have adapted to the changed institutional context of longer working lives: Hess (2017) shows that preferred retirement ages have increased significantly in 12 European countries between 2003 and 2010.…”