Abstract
This comparative chapter serves as a stylized frame of comparison for the single-country chapters of the book. It briefly contrasts the development of retirement transitions in the 13 countries selected for this book by showing older workers’ employment trends over the last decades and allowing us to contrast trends in early retirement (in the 1970s and 1980s) with active aging (since the late 1990s). Furthermore, it provides an overview on the context of retirement transitions that reflects on institutional, workplace, and individual conditions. In sum, the results of our international comparison suggest a close relationship between older workers’ employment levels and contextual factors at the institutional, the workplace, and the individual level.
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- 1.
We restrict our overview to men alone because women’s employment rates are often influenced by two simultaneous processes that may counteract (or amplify) one another: (a) the general trend toward an increased employment participation of women and (b) the equally visible trend toward early respectively late exit: for a more thorough discussion of women’s exits, see Hofäcker and Radl (Chap. 1, in this volume) and the single-country chapters.
- 2.
The average effective age of retirement is defined as the average age of exit from the labor force during a 5-year period. Labor force (net) exits are estimated by taking the difference in the participation rate for each 5-year age group (40 and over) at the beginning of the period and the rate for the corresponding age group aged 5 years older at the end of the period. The official age corresponds to the age at which a pension can be received irrespective of whether a worker has a long insurance record of years of contributions (OECD 2013a).
- 3.
Unfortunately, no cross-national information is available on the occupational pension systems of the countries in this volume. These are, however, discussed in more detail in the respective country chapters.
- 4.
A study by Qi (2016) investigates the role of changes in educational attainment in the Swedish population in the increase in old age employment. He concluded that, at least for Sweden, the increase in educational attainment did not contribute to the rising employment trend for men. However, among women, this compositional change explained 2.5 % out of 9.3 % increase in old age employment across cohorts. Hence, it could be concluded that a minor part of the increasing employment rates might be related to structural changes in the population.
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König, S., Hess, M., Hofäcker, D. (2016). Trends and Determinants of Retirement Transition in Europe, the USA and Japan: A Comparative Overview. In: Hofäcker, D., Hess, M., König, S. (eds) Delaying Retirement. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56697-3_2
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