Work Retirement and Wellbeing Final Key Findings Report

August 2017

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Work Retirement and Wellbeing Investigators

Deborah Smeaton Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster Helen Barnes Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster Sandra Vegeris Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster

Getinet Haile University of Nottingham

Andrea Principi National Institute of Health and Science on Aging (INRCA), Ancona, Italy

Marco Socci INRCASara Santini INRCA Mirko Di Rosa INRCA

Kevin Cahill Center on Aging & Work, Boston College

Gerard Naegele Technical University of DortmundMoritz Hess Technical University of DortmundJurgen Bauknecht Technical University of Dortmund

Martin Nekola Charles University, PragueMarkéta Nekolová Charles University, PragueMichal Svarc Charles University, Prague

Phil Taylor Federation University, Australia

Sergio Salis NatCen

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Contents

Introduction..............................................................................................................................6

Study Background................................................................................................................6

Report Structure...................................................................................................................7

Section 1: Key Findings...........................................................................................................9

Project summary #1: Working longer is associated with subjective and objective health benefits...............................................................................................................................10

Project summary #2: Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement....................................................12

Project summary #3: Visions of retirement in USA, England and Italy: implications for the Active Ageing agenda.........................................................................................................14

Project summary #4: Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda?.........................................................................................................21

Project summary #5: The Growing Discontents of Older Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life............................................................................23

Project summary #6: Older workers’ advantages squeezed as age related earnings differentials are eroded and systems of assessment and reward based on principles of synchronous equality emerge.............................................................................................26

Project summary #7: Phased retirement – an effective extender of working life?..............28

Project summary #8: Job change in later life – a process of marginalization?...................29

Project Summary # 9: Reverse retirement - a mixed methods study of returning to work in England, Italy and the USA: propensities, predictors and preferences..............................34

Project summary #10: Does retirement open opportunities for a more physically active lifestyle after leaving sedentary work?................................................................................39

Project summary #11: Voluntary retirement motivations and views on changes to State Pension age........................................................................................................................43

Project summary #12: Optionality of work. Does the Option of Continued Work Later in Life Result in a More Optimistic View of Retirement?........................................................46

Project summary #13: Adjusting to Retirement in three national contexts.........................48

Section 2: Achievements, Dissemination and Looking Ahead...............................................60

Peer reviewed publications from the study:........................................................................60

Working papers..................................................................................................................61

Study Reports.....................................................................................................................62

Disseminated Findings.......................................................................................................62

BLOGS...............................................................................................................................66

Achievements from the award summarised...........................................................................72

Overarching objectives of the project:................................................................................72

Key findings........................................................................................................................72

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A) Health and wellbeing implications of extended working life.......................................73

B) Later life wellbeing and satisfaction in the workplace................................................75

C) Later Life Labour Markets..........................................................................................76

D) Retirement..................................................................................................................78

Policy and Practice Implications – Taking the Findings Forward...........................................80

Labour Market Policy..........................................................................................................80

The Workplace...................................................................................................................81

Local Communities.............................................................................................................82

Colleges and Universities...................................................................................................84

References.............................................................................................................................85

Appendix 1: Paper Abstracts..................................................................................................89

Appendix 2: Presentation Abstracts.......................................................................................94

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Introduction

This report presents the main high level findings from the Work Retirement and Wellbeing study as required by the ESRC.

Study BackgroundPopulations across the developed world are ageing and demographic support ratios are falling. Alongside these demographic developments, an early retirement culture has arisen among men (OECD, 2006) and while downward employment participation trends have reversed in recent years they have not returned to levels previously seen. These demographic and labour market trends have raised concerns about poverty in older age, skills shortages, and fiscal imbalances. Pension reform and extending working life (EWL), up to and beyond state pension age, have therefore become policy priorities. There are, however, concerns in relation to the EWL agenda which raise the prospect of (a) health risks for some groups and the possibility that declining retirement ages and rising life expectancy are not independent (Neuman, 2008; Macnicol, 2008) and (b) labour market marginalisation later in life as older workers search for jobs that better meet their needs and circumstances.

Against this background of ageing workforces and delayed retirement the study consists of 4 work packages, unified by a focus on the maintenance of health and wellbeing among older workers (OW). The study is informed, in part, by a ‘conservation of resources’ (COR) theoretical framework (Treadway et al 2005; Wright & Hobfall 2004), which contends that people seek to build up and maintain coping resources to manage their work and life. Resources which promote wellbeing are both individual (skills, health, self-esteem etc) and situational (such as interesting work, social networks or monetary resources). In a workplace context some older employees may have depleted resources and cope less well with challenges at work (Treadway et al, 2005) while others may exercise resilience (Clark et al, 2011). EWL may therefore expose people to risks depending on their resources and established health-related behaviours. The ‘sustainability’ of jobs is therefore critical and the COR perspective addresses the issue of job quality which has, to date, been lacking in research and policy debates on older workers (White 2012). Roberts (2006) has similarly highlighted the need to better understand how conditions under the ‘new capitalism’ affect older workers.

Overarching objectives of the project are to (a) promote understanding of health and wellbeing later in life – both in the workplace and as people make the transition to retirement and (b) examine later life labour markets including: the policies that shape patterns of employment; the role of phased retirement opportunities; job quality; labour market marginalisation; and reverse retirement. To meet these objectives the

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study is divided into 4 work packages. WP1 explores extended working life issues from a macro perspective – examining the range of measures implemented by governments to both prolong employment and mitigate potential adverse effects by means of polices which enable, for example: flexible working, phased retirement or job mobility to improve person-job fit. WP2a uses international harmonized datasets (SHARE, ELSA and HRS) to estimate the health and wellbeing impacts of later life employment, comparing ‘matched’ individuals who have ‘retired’ with those who continue to work. WP2b qualitatively explores health related behaviour change over the work/retirement transition period – using a longitudinal design to investigate the mechanisms associated with the health and wellbeing/retirement link. The study compares individuals transitioning to retirement in three distinct contexts (in terms of culture and welfare regime) - USA, England and Italy, examining retirement aspirations, orientations and outcomes (including work related). WP3 focuses on the workplace to investigate workplace policies and practices which may be associated with wellbeing and satisfaction, exploring how and whether impacts differ among different age groups and whether particular practices may therefore impede or promote extended working lives. WP4 examines later life labour markets (LLLMs) to assess: the marginalisation hypothesis; whether phased retirement opportunities extend working life; job quality and the accommodation of older workers;and the phenomenon of reverse retirement.

Report Structure

Section 1 of the report presents key findings. The project has produced a series of publications and working papers which have been submitted to peer reviewed journals or are shortly to be submitted. These outputs, other reports, dissemination activities and associated power point presentations can be found and downloaded from the project webpage: www.workandretirment.uk. Abstracts relating to each output can be found in Appendix 1.

This report summarises evidence from the range of outputs, highlighting key findings and indicating where further detail can be found. The following summaries are presented in section 1:

Key Finding #1: Working longer is associated with subjective and objective health benefits

Key Finding #2: Retirement offers a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change

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Key Finding #3 Plans for retirement in USA, England and Italy: implications for the Active Ageing agenda

Key Finding #4 Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda?

Key Finding #5 The Growing Discontents of Older British Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life

Key Finding #6 Older workers’ advantages squeezed as age related earnings differentials are eroded and systems of assessment and reward based on principles of synchronous equality emerge

Key Finding #7 Phased retirement – an effective extender of working life?

Key Finding #8 Job change in later life – a process of marginalization?

Key Finding #9 Reverse retirement – a mixed methods study of determinants and aspirations in England, USA and Italy

Key Finding #10 Is retirement associated with a more physically active lifestyle after leaving sedentary work?

Key Finding #11 Voluntary retirement motivations and views on changes to State Pension age

Key Finding #12 Optimism about retirement is related to the optionality of work in the years ahead, but not if continued work is a financial necessity

Key Finding #13: Adjusting to Retirement in Three National Contexts

Section 2 addresses the following questions:

What were the most significant achievements from the award?

To what extent were the award objectives met? 

How might the findings be taken forward and by whom?

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Section 1: Key Findings

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Project summary #1: Working longer is associated with subjective and objective health benefits.

Background:

A widely adopted ‘extended working lives’ policy agenda promotes working in later life on multiple grounds: for pension system sustainability, to meet employer skills demands and also for the individual-level health benefits it is claimed to confer. However, it is not clear that delayed retirement will result in positive health effects. While there is copious research investigating the impact of health on retirement timing there is notably less analysis of the impact of retirement on subsequent health, with inconsistent evidence.

Methods:

The study investigated the health and wellbeing implications of longer working lives, comparing health and wellbeing outcomes among those 'retiring' with those remaining employed at older ages. Harmonised data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, for England, the Health and Retirement Study, for the US, and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, for 11 European countries, were pooled together to identify a sample of around 1,300 individuals who retired at some point between 2004 and 2007. The causal effect of retirement on health was then assessed for these individuals by using the propensity score matching approach in tandem with the difference-in-differences estimation technique.

Findings:

The evidence suggests that subjective perceptions of wellbeing are compromised and the incidence of chronic health conditions increases on retirement. Retirement adversely affects retirees’ health in the immediate post-retirement period and, over the longer term; a downward trend is maintained with the subjective and objective health of retirees declining further relative to those who remain in work. Subgroup analysis indicates that the same story holds for men and women and for those from physical and non-physical occupational backgrounds.

It should be noted that our findings indicate a stronger impact on subjective health outcomes, which include considerations of mental wellbeing. Therefore, the findings particularly support the idea that extending working life is beneficial to older individuals because work is a source of intellectual stimulation, enhances individuals’ sense of purpose, provides supportive social networks and, for many, is a source of physical activity whether at, or travelling to and from, work. On balance, these positive attributes would appear to outweigh the potentially negative health effects

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associated with stressful or physically challenging working conditions, relief from which might be expected to lead to positive retirement health effects.

Separate analysis of England only (ELSA) revealed that individuals from sedentary job backgrounds experience the biggest declines in objective health upon retirement (with the incidence of a chronic condition increasing by 10 percentage points compared with an average overall increase of 5 percentage points); and the negative impact on objective health was worse for men than women.

The findings have implications for working opportunities later in life but also for health messages and advice in retirement in terms of physical activity, diet and opportunities for social engagement.

For detailed findings see:Salis S, Smeaton, D. and Icardi, R (2017, forthcoming) Health impacts of retiring: Evidence from matched data for the US, England and European countries.

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Project summary #2: Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement.

Over the past two decades, retirement has increasingly come to be presented as a ‘risk’ for individuals, whether in relation to income or due to the potentially negative impact on wellbeing, physical, and mental health. In light of warnings that retirement is a health risk, the study explores whether workers plan significant change to their health-related behaviours as they make the transition from employment to retirement. 

The number of people aged 60 or over is expected to pass 20 million in the UK by 2030. Concerns that an ageing population will be a burden on healthcare services have highlighted a need to improve health related behaviour to prevent or delay lifestyle diseases. Using a habit discontinuity theoretical framework to explore anticipated lifestyle changes over the retirement transition this strand of the study draws on interview data with 140 individuals in the UK, US and Italy as they make the transition from work to retirement (interviewed in the year before retirement, then 1 and 2 years following retirement).

Findings: The motivations and circumstances associated with planned change or continuity were highly varied. Some orientations, however, were associated with gender, occupational background, and home circumstances, while income was also a factor in some instances. The study found that one group of retires expected a life of continuity either because they were satisfied with their existing health behaviour(s) (in some instances changes had already been made recently in response to health scares); or, although aware that their practices were not healthy, acknowledged a lack of motivation or self-efficacy.

A second group of respondents saw retirement as triggering a time of change for the better. Many felt retirement represented an opportunity for proactively introducing positive health practices, or saw improved health related behaviour as a beneficial side effect of retiring from challenging work circumstances. Although the structure and routines provided by paid employment are a resource for well-being (providing social contact, income, activity, and ‘meaning’), they are also a constraint which limits the available time and emotional and physical energy to address other lifestyle areas such as exercise and healthy eating.

For a third group, the transition to retirement was seen to carry inherent health risks - for example, drinking alcohol more frequently, over-eating due to boredom, and slowing down or ‘vegetating’. Without the structure of work, there was a feeling that daily drinking could easily become habitual. Similarly, the extra time at retirement was viewed

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as a potential danger in terms of over-eating for some people, as this was a pattern they had identified in relation to holidays and unstructured time off at home. Others expressed concern about lapsing into a state of inactivity.

Some believed they faced barriers to living a healthy lifestyle. For instance, physical activity was seen to be limited by living alone, cold wet winter weather; no longer having sporting companions; reduced incomes and mobility difficulties. One single woman, aged 55, was concerned that, living alone, she may struggle to keep herself motivated to achieve her goals: “there is a park and there are canals, there are some walks..but that’s going to have to be me saying to myself right, come on. Because I’m not going to have anybody else to spur me on so that’s where it’s going to be difficult”. Several men in particular expressed a desire to play more sport and may benefit from organised community teams and events. In explaining reductions in physical activity over the past 10 years, one married man aged 60 described the need for companions as the younger generation of his family were too busy “People I played football with don’t play anymore because we’re all getting a bit older now, yeah, most people stop.” The cost of sporting and leisure pursuits was also raised as a source of concern by both men and women.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that while retirement may present an opportunity for positive habit change, there is considerable heterogeneity in attitudes and circumstances among those retiring. The extended working life agenda has been promoted, in part, as a means to preserve health and while continued employment may be beneficial for those who foresee potential threats to their health related practices, for others, the nature of their jobs or hours they work are described as obstacles to more healthy practices whether in relation to physical activity, healthy eating or alcohol consumption. The health implications of retirement are therefore complex and context dependent. Interviewees who were vocal that retirement carried risks they would need to actively guard against were open to advice, support and interventions that may help prevent such feared outcomes. These findings shed light on previous quantitative studies by highlighting individual attitudes toward and concerns around health related behaviours, providing explanations for change and continuity at this transitional point.

For detailed findings see:Smeaton, D., Barnes, H. and Vegeris, S. (2016) Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement. Journal of Aging and Health: 1-20 (available online, First View http://jah.sagepub.com/search/results?fulltext=smeaton&x=0&y=0&submit=yes&journal_set=spjah&src=selected&andorexactfulltext=and)

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Project summary #3: Visions of retirement in USA, England and Italy: implications for the Active Ageing agenda

This study explores whether the plans of individuals on the cusp of retirement are in line with the active ageing (AA) agenda set by policy makers in Europe. The study was carried out in Italy, England, and the United States (US), thus extending the AA concept to the American context. A total of 133 older workers who planned to retire within the next 10-12 months were interviewed (55 in England, 40 in Italy and 38 in the US). Active Ageing Index (AAI) dimensions were used to gauge the orientation of older people toward their retirement. The results of the study suggest that, with some differences (for instance, more work-oriented plans from American respondents and more care-related plans from Italians), retirement plans of interviewees were substantially consistent with the active ageing perspective. However, findings pointed to the need for the AA paradigm to take greater account of individual wellbeing, by including indicators of leisure activities which were a prevalent retirement goal and by considering the re-weighting of employment and informal care dimensions as these ‘productive’ activities often reflected constrained choice.

Background

This study examines the transition from work to retirement, with an interest in understanding lifestyle aspirations from the perspective of the normative ‘Active Ageing’ concept which now informs strategic policy in relation to older people across Europe. Despite observations of an increased diversity of roles and activities among “retired” people, it has been recognised that in older age the propensity and the ability to participate in the new cultural landscape and adopt the new roles which are opening up, varies by cultural groups (Ranzijn 2010), social position (Gilleard and Higgs 2002; Hyde et al. 2004; Price 2002) and individual choice. In addition, pension systems, labour market regulations and welfare regimes in tandem set the context in which retirement trajectories unfold. Opportunities may also be more locally determined, according to the degree of local authority/federal funding patterns, and costs /availability of access to public spaces and facilities (Deeming 2009).

In order to further explore the potential influence of opportunity structures for active ageing, both national and local, this study uses qualitative research methods to examine experiences of older workers making the transition from work to retirement in Italy, England and the United States. Insofar as public policies determine work opportunities, income, learning and training options and family responsibility constraints (reflecting provision of services), individuals residing in countries with

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different institutional settings might exhibit distinct orientations toward retirement and different plans for how they will use their time.

As advanced Western economies some similarity of attitudes, practices and opportunities are expected, both in working life and in retirement but there are differences across the 3 countries which reflect cultural diversity in terms of economic and welfare regime, including differences in the institutional setting which regulates the transition from work to retirement.

Italy represents a Mediterranean welfare regime where the role of the family is central (Ferrera 1996). A “familistic culture” has been used to describe the strong family ties evident in southern Europe. Childcare and eldercare are predominantly delegated to the family. Formal care arrangements are less developed with implications for the range of options facing older people as they enter retirement, as retirees become a resource for caring roles. Concerning the transition from work to retirement, the Italian context is dominated by increased barriers to early retirement, with economic penalties associated with retirement before age 62. Anti-age discrimination legislation in employment was introduced in 2003, and recent labour market reforms prevent large companies firing workers who reach the statutory retirement age, in order to allow workers to remain employed until the age of 70. Despite these reforms the effective average retirement age is lower than in most European countries. In Italy it is challenging to combine work with a pension, as an Italian employee must first exit employment to become eligible for the pension; and part-time work in the lead up to state pension age is not widespread.

England and US represent a liberal welfare model, characterised by de-familialisation with a broader role for private care (Bambra 2004), which enables individuals to participate in society (work, volunteering, other activities) and be independent from the family (Esping-Andersen 1990; 1999). However, there are differences between these two countries concerning the transition from work to retirement. In the UK it is not possible to draw a state pension before SPa which has been increasing, to reach age 68 by 2039. Most individuals in the UK do not rely exclusively on the state pension however - in 2013 62% of pensioners were in receipt of an occupational pension and 17% in receipt of a personal pension (Pension Policy Institute, 2015). The UK tax, benefit and pensions systems permit individuals to work whilst drawing state and/or private pensions, providing a financial incentive to continue working beyond state pension age. In 2006 age discrimination legislation was introduced and in 2011 the default retirement age was abolished so older employees are no longer expected to retire once they reach SPa. The UK also introduced measures in 2004 to allow pension drawdown without first having to leave employment – this makes shifting to part-time employment more affordable. Other measures introduced to promote flexibility include the 2014 Flexible Working Regulations which extend to all employees the statutory right to request flexible

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working such as reduced hours, flexitime or working from home (although employers can refuse requests on business grounds).

In the US a variety of pro-work incentives has impacted older Americans since the early 1980s (Cahill et al 2016). In 1986 mandatory retirement was eliminated for the majority of American workers. The Full Retirement Age (FRA) of the public pension system, known as Social Security, has been increasing, scheduled to increase further, in stages, to 67. Americans can, however, access SS early, currently from the age of 62 with actuarial reductions. Other incentives include: the Delayed Retirement Credit (DRC) and elimination of the Social Security earnings test for individuals who work beyond the FRA. While approximately one half of the US workforce has participated in an employer-provided pension over the past 35 years, the type of pension plan has shifted dramatically away from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans. This switch has left older Americans more exposed to both investment risk and longevity risk later in life, and created an incentive to work longer to insure against both (Munnell 2014).

In relation to cultural differences there is likely to be considerable heterogeneity within nations in terms of attitudes and values according to age, ethnicity and class but there is a body of research to suggest broad national cultural differences that may have implications for retirement practices and preferences (for example Inglehart 1997; Hofstede 2001; and Schwartz, 2006). In the figure below, Schwartz locates countries according to typical values across 3 dimensions: Autonomy vs Embeddedness; Egalitarianism vs Hierarchy; and Harmony vs Mastery. Each of the countries of focus fall to the left, ie. the autonomy end of the spectrum, valuing the pursuit of individual goals (rather than emphasising obedience and shared goals), but with some differences:

• Italy - emphasizes egalitarianism (including a commitment to co-operate), and harmony more than other regions.

• The culture of the English-speaking region is especially high in affective autonomy (i.e. the pursuit of pleasure, excitement or variety)

• The culture in America differs from that of other English-speaking countries insofar as it emphasises mastery (ie the values of success, ambition and work ethic) and hierarchy (ie the legitimacy of inequality in the distribution of resources and power) more and harmony, and egalitarianism less.

These differences may lead to distinct perceptions of what retirement means and the kinds of roles and activities that individuals wish to adopt.

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Other studies which have found differences in retirement orientation, reflecting distinct cultural contexts include Hershey (2007) who notes: “From as early as adolescence, Americans are indoctrinated to focus on the value of work, earnings, material goods, achievement and independence”. In a similar vein, Torres (1999) and Shenk and Christiansen (2009) found that Americans understood successful ageing primarily to be associated with self-sufficiency and the ability to live alone, without dependence on family or formal services (in contrast to those in Hong Kong who viewed their families’ willingness to meet their needs as a sign of successful ageing).

Findings

The Active Ageing Index includes indicators representing four domains (Zaidi et al. 2013): employment, participation in society, independent living and capacity for active ageing. The domain of employment includes employment rates of older workers from 55 to 74; participation in society is related to voluntary activities, informal care of children, grandchildren and older adults, and participation in political activities. The independent living dimension relates to physical exercise, lifelong learning, income and access to health care; and the dimension of capacity for active ageing includes, social connectedness (meeting friends, relatives or colleagues), use of ICT and education.

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Examples of retirement plans in each of the four dimensions considered by the AAI were found. Additionally, two further categories emerged from participants’ narratives: planned activities in the realm of leisure that are mostly focused on the individual, rather than the societal level and there were pre-retirees without specific retirement plans.

Our study found that plans for retirement were mainly consistent with the active ageing perspective. Although an expectation for a fully ‘passive’ retirement was not a common theme, there were examples of individuals seeing retirement as a time to wind down and take a more relaxed pace of life. There were also a few examples of individuals from England and Italy who feared that retirement would be an ending and for whom the future was opaque, with the possibility of new social roles far from clear. In relation to the different dimensions of active ageing we found several differences between respondents in the different countries; these revolved primarilyaround the dimensions of employment and participation in society. Differences were also found relative to plans for individual active leisure, although the latter is not considered by the AAI.

Whereas paid work was a dominant expectation for US interviewees, for Italian respondents retirement was considered a one-time, permanent break from paid employment, explained in large part by the Italian institutional setting. In contrast to the US and English respondents, Italians must fully withdraw from the labour market in order to start receiving their state pension. Moreover, in a climate of pension system reforms, with a gradually increasing retirement age, most of the Italian interviewees chose to retire ‘as soon as possible’, before new reforms locked them into the labour market for longer. This is in line with results showing that European older workers generally wish to retire before the state pension age (Hofäcker, 2012). In order to increase the participation of older people in the labour market, Italian policy makers are advised to introduce greater flexibility both in terms of the availability of part-time hours and in options for state pension drawdown combined with employment. Italians were also motivated by a perceived need to make way for the younger generation given very high levels of youth unemployment.

Insofar as financial need was a common motivation for aspirations to continue working, it should be noted that the role of employment within the active ageing agenda may be multifaceted. Our results suggest that high employment rates cannot simply be read as a positive outcome from the perspective of individuals (as implied by the AAI). In some cases, in the absence of financial constraints, older people would not choose to continue working. When work is experienced as a constrained choice, this may compromise quality of life, especially if individuals struggle to find the work they need or are pushed into the casual labour market, characterised by low pay and poor terms and conditions. Quality of employment must therefore also be taken into account. This is important in contexts such as the USA and the UK, where pension income is much lower than the previous wage (average net wage

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replacement rates in retirement for Italy, US and UK are 80%, 45% and 29% respectively). The American work orientation is consistent with both Schwartz’s (2006) suggestion that ‘mastery’ i.e. success and ambition are valued in American society and Hershey’s (2007) observation that work, earnings and material goods are dominant aspirations in American culture.

Expectations to provide informal care for others were common among the Italian interviewees. This orientation is reflected in national data which show that the incidence of active grandparenting is far more widespread in Italy than the USA or UK (with around one-quarter of US and British older people caring for grandchildren at least once a week compared with over half in Italy). Across all countries there were interviewees who viewed caring roles less as an opportunity for a varied and active retirement and more of an obstacle to other preferred activities. While most interviewed people were delighted at the prospect of spending more time with grandchildren, concerns were expressed that as retirees they would become expected to perform caring roles on a routine basis now that they were not productive in the labour market. These findings raise questions in relation to the AAI which recommends increased promotion of caring roles as an integral component of active ageing, especially given the mixed evidence relating to physical and psychological benefits of caring among previous studies (e.g. Coe and van Houtven, 2009; Colombo et al, 2011; Neuberger and Haberkern, 2013).

In terms of capacity for active ageing, increased contact with family, friends and other people were central to the plans for retirement for interviewees in all three countries. Several of them, however, expressed concern that contacts with work colleagues would decline after retirement. Employer initiatives to help their staff make the transition to retirement would, in these instances, be welcomed and could benefit both retirees and employers alike.

Most notably among the English and Italian interviewees, a widespread wish for a retirement of active leisure was also found. While these activities are not considered within the AAI, they are positive for the health, wellbeing and life satisfaction of older people. According to Jun (2014), just as individuals need to achieve work–life balance during their working years, later in life there is a need to attend to ‘life-balance’, i.e. how time is balanced between constraints/committed time (work, caring, volunteering, cleaning, cooking), regenerative time (sleeping and eating) and discretionary time (including leisure pursuits), as either too much or too little discretionary time can be bad for wellbeing. The AAI tends to focus on ‘committed time’, while the value of discretionary time should also be acknowledged, as reflected in the plans and aspirations of the English sample in particular, who were more oriented towards leisure (consistent with Schwartz’s cultural schema above which suggests that English culture is especially high in affective autonomy, i.e. the pursuit of pleasure, excitement or variety). The Italian respondents were similarly leisure oriented but expectations in terms of caring commitments were stronger.

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Consistent with previous studies (Nuttman-Schwartz, 2004), a dominant theme among interviewees was the explicit acknowledgement that retirement presents a risk of undesired withdrawal from society. A concern was voiced that there was a need to guard against the emergence of a more passive lifestyle. While some were approaching retirement with a relaxed attitude, for many others the idea of retirement provoked anxieties about ‘vegetating’ or being a burden to society. These fears suggest that more support should be offered at this life-stage to provide assistance in making plans and to increase the provision of opportunities for self-fulfilment and realising aspirations during retirement. Awareness of retirement preparation events or courses was non-existent among the Italian interviewees, and most provision in the UK and USA is focused on financial planning and instrumental advice.

This paper demonstrated that, although some dominant themes differed within each country (e.g. more work-oriented plans from US respondents, more care-related plans from Italian respondents and a leisure orientation among the English), retirement plans of the interviewees were largely consistent with the active ageing policy agenda. The study also revealed retirement expectations with an individual leisure focus. In essence, although it is important to measure the untapped potential of older people for active ageing from a productivist perspective, to ensure that latent demand for such opportunities are met, this study suggests the importance of also measuring other dimensions of retirement which have implications for the quality of life and wellbeing of older people. Future studies might deal with this challenge by including leisure indicators and by rethinking the weight of some of the current indicators, such as employment and informal care. One potential weakness of the AAI is that it may implicitly encourage older people to hold on, for as long as possible, to priorities and productive lifestyles characteristic of earlier life-stages. The risk is that this approach fails to recognise that quality of life and wellbeing as people age may also depend on a shift in pace, rhythms and focus.

For detailed findings see:

Principi, A., Santini, S, Socci, M, Smeaton, D., Cahill, K., Vegeris, S. and Barnes, H. (2015) Retirement plans and active ageing: Perspectives in three countries. Ageing and Society Online First, August 2016, pp 1 – 27 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=10484189&jid=ASO&volumeId=-1&issueId=-1&aid=10484184&fromPage=cupadmin&pdftype=6316268&repository=authInst

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Project summary #4: Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda?

High Performance Work Practices, designed to enhance workforce productivity and performance, are found to be largely compatible with the extended working life agenda; a deficit perspective of ageing workers is refuted. Findings do, however, highlight the need for ‘a-synchronous equality’ management frameworks that facilitate individual adaptations within the workplace as needs, priorities and abilities evolve over the working lifetime.

IntroductionThe UK currently faces a number of labour market challenges, key among these include: rapid population ageing, high rates of premature labour market exit among older workers and widespread skills shortages. Workforce ageing has also raised the prospect of an economy less adaptable to technological change, with perceived risks for productivity and economic progress. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, growth has remained weak, and recent productivity forecasts have been revised downwards; improving economic competitiveness is also therefore a vital strategic goal.

In response to raised life expectancy and workforce ageing, extending working life (EWL) has become a policy priority. Alongside EWL initiatives, in order to boost national economic performance and accelerate recovery, there is a growing commitment among policymakers to more widely promote among UK businesses a range of practices designed to achieve higher productivity and improve competitiveness (HPWP). Given that several studies have proposed that HPWP achieves positive performance outcomes by means of increased work intensification, associated with stress and reduced wellbeing, this strand of the project raises the question: to what extent are the dual aims of EWL and HPWP in tension?

Using data from WERS2011 and applying multi-level modelling techniques, this study focuses on the workplace to investigate policies and practices which may be associated with work strain, wellbeing and satisfaction, exploring how and whether impacts differ among different age groups and whether particular practices may therefore impede or promote extended working lives

FindingsOlder workers experience higher job satisfaction and wellbeing than younger workers and they are resilient and capable of adapting to their changing cognitive and physical abilities given the right supportive workplace circumstances. In the presence of 8 empirically based HPWP bundles, age differences in wellbeing and satisfaction were discernible however:

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Regardless of age, role involvement practices (team working, autonomy and variety of work tasks) all increased wellbeing and satisfaction.

Employee engagement practices, appraisal systems and incentive pay reduced satisfaction and wellbeing but among younger workers only.

Two bundles of practices were, however, associated with significant negative age moderating effects with implications for ageing workforce management. These were spatiotemporal flexibility (working from home and time sovereignty) and development oriented HRM strategies (workforce training and intensive development strategies) both of which are significantly more harmful to the wellbeing of older workers compared with younger.

A mixed picture therefore emerges leading to recommendations that more age sensitive HRM strategies be introduced to support the EWL agenda. Applying principles of ‘synchronous equality’ (i.e. ensuring continual comparison and identical performance assessment criteria regardless of age) rather than deploying an a-synchronous framework of support and assessment is likely to undermine efforts to retain older workers.

For detailed findings see:Haile, G and Smeaton D (2017) Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda? WRW Working Paper # 5

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Project summary #5: The Growing Discontents of Older Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life

The ageing workforce policy debate is rightly focussed on providing opportunities for older people to continue working should they so wish. However, the prevalence of heteronomy, alienation, and more pressurised working environments associated with the ‘new capitalism’, should not be underestimated as key barriers to work motivation later in life.

Population/workforce ageing has given rise to narratives of ‘crisis’ with fears of; widespread skills shortages; pension system collapse; pensioner poverty; and threats to national economic performance. In response, extending working life (EWL) has become a policy priority with regulatory, legislative and campaigning initiatives introduced. Despite this wide ranging programme of reform implemented over the past two decades, less than 50% of older workers are still in employment in the year before their state pension age (currently 62 for women and 65 for men). The study therefore aims to better understand retirement motivations based on an integrated mixed method approach. The research conducted an analysis of 4 nationally representative datasets with identical question wording (the 1992 ‘Employment in Britain’ survey; 2001 and 2006 ‘Skills Survey’; and 2012 Skills and Employment Survey) to examine older, relative to younger, workers’ overall job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The research was supplemented by a qualitative study of 55 men and women living in England, aged 55-69,as they made the transition from work to retirement.

Older workers job satisfaction and organisational commitment is decliningStudies have repeatedly shown that older workers are generally more committed to their organisations and have higher job satisfaction than younger workers. This satisfaction/ commitment premium, however, has been slipping since the early 90s – see Table 1., National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2001, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate a decline in overall job attitude among older employees, relative to younger, following the changed conditions of the 1990s and across the major recession that began in 2008. Decomposition by socio-economic class shows that older employees in the ‘service class’ (managerial and professional employees) are affected at least as much as intermediate and less skilled classes, thus indicating that ‘service-class’ employees are not invulnerable to a changing economic environment

In diagnosing aspects of the work situation implicated in declining satisfaction and commitment among older employees, work demands and the nature of work emerge as key areas of discontent. It is speculated that declines in job attitude reflect psychological contract breach arising from shifts toward a ‘new capitalism’ - associated with

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internationalised and deregulated market competition and short term profit maximisation. Commercial/financial pressures have led employers in both the public and private sectors increasingly to maximise the efficiency of individual employees with less tolerance for poorly aligned performance and rewards. ‘Safe havens’ in late career have therefore all but disappeared. Within Lazear’s (1981) deferred compensation framework, older workers will thereby perceive their expectations (formed in previous decades) as being unmet.

Table 1: Estimated effects on overall attitudes (OC and OJS) of older employee (50+) with reference to younger (under-50) employees, and over-time differences

survey year> 1992 2001 2006 2012 2012-1992

(a) Organisational commitment Effects Differencesestimate 1.2438** 0.1756 0.0234 -0.4747* -1.719**

s.e. 0.2243 0.1521 0.1448 0.2045 0.3035N 2659 3632 3703 1864(b) Overall job satisfactionEstimate 0.2524** 0.1155*0.1058*0.044 -0.2084*

s.e. 0.0735 0.0588 0.052 0.0761 0.1058

N 2994 3843 3891 2011

Explaining declining satisfaction and commitmentSupport for the suggestion that declining job attitudes of older relative to younger workers is attributable to the ‘new capitalism’ is provided by evidence from a complementary in-depth qualitative study. In discussions of retirement motivations a strong emergent theme related specifically to a sense of deteriorating working conditions with many instances of workers leaving their jobs due to the experience of increasing demands, cultures of continuous change, burgeoning bureaucratic overload, and other changes in the workplace which amounted to jobs feeling qualitatively different from those entered years ago. The following quotes from retirees exemplify these concerns and disappointments:

“the nature of work, so much more is required … more and more is demanded. When you’re young you can work at that level of intensity but I think you can’t do that forever without it destroying people, destroying their health.” (Female age 60, public sector worker)

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“I used to love my job but it’s changed now, they’ve moved the goalposts and are making it harder and harder”. (Male age 61, private sector)

“You’re always working to a deadline that’s being shortened all the time” (Male age 62, private sector)

“When I was a staff nurse ... in those days we were very task orientated and then it changed ... in the past ten, fifteen years or so we’ve lost sight of the patient and the empathy with patients, there isn’t the time to talk, it’s just a process and it’s, you know, in, out, how much does this cost and let’s hope there’s no return, you know, it’s a different ball game.” (Female age 60, public sector)

ConclusionTensions between the ‘new capitalism’ and extended working life policy priorities are evident. Increasing demands, more intensified working environments and other changes in the workplace amount to a significant shift in the terms and conditions of jobs, accompanied by a sense of contract violation, deteriorating job satisfaction and organisational commitment. While ‘continuous change’ has been a characteristic of workplaces for many years now, the pressure to continue on a path of improved efficiency is unlikely to have run out of steam, and will remain a feature of public and private sector working practices given current concerns with low productivity and weak growth in the UK. While the government has instituted a fairly comprehensive range of policies to promote EWL, job quality remains an obstacle to further progress. Employers and Trade Unions therefore have an important role to play in motivating and enabling older workers to continue working.

For detailed findings see:Smeaton, D and White, M. (2015) The Growing Discontents of Older British Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life. Social Policy and Society, volume 15, issue 03, pp. 369-385.;

White, M. and Smeaton, D. (2016) Older employees’ declining attitudes over 20 years and across classes. Human Relations, Vol. 69(8) 1619–1641;

Smeaton, D. (2016) Voluntary Retirement Motives: Implications for the Extending Working Lives Policy Agenda in the UK. A submission to the Cridland Review.

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Project summary #6: Older workers’ advantages squeezed as age related earnings differentials are eroded and systems of assessment and reward

based on principles of synchronous equality emerge

A paradigm shift in Britains structure of incentives is underway. Older workers have been losing their privileged status as age related earnings differentials are eroded, the deferred compensation paradigm is weakened, and less employer tolerance for poorly aligned performance and rewards prevails. These developments suggest that a process of greater inter-generational equality, at least in terms of earnings, is in progress alongside the emergence of management practices dominated by principles of synchronous equality. A range of implications arise for workers and employers.

Older employees’ wages and earnings declined over the period 1991-2006, when compared with younger employees. The overall fall in relative wages was about 18 per cent, and for relative earnings 21 per cent. The relative fall in older employees’ pay had set in by the mid-90s and it proceeded over the whole period to 2006. Deteriorating pay applies to both men and women, but most markedly to men.

The findings have broad implications for employment relationships and service contracts in the UK and raise the prospect of increased labour commodification; they also raise questions in relation to potential impacts on firm performance that arises from change in structures of incentive. The erosion of age related wage and earnings differentials points to a weakening if not abandonment of the deferred compensation paradigm, less employer tolerance for poorly aligned performance and rewards, and therefore fewer ‘safe havens’ in late career - older workers are likely to be enduring more pressured working environments as a consequence with implications for wellbeing. Tensions between equality and fairness arise alongside questions of dignity at work; systematic performance management and staff appraisal have become more widespread and, as conceptualized by Beck and Williams (2015: 271), “synchronous equality based on continual comparison has replaced an a-synchronous, or processional approach in which younger people eventually benefit from a provision which favours older employees…a considerable departure from how age groups have been managed to date”. Achieving equality of pay, treatment or performance criteria may therefore be at the expense of protecting older workers.

On a more positive note, while developments in the pay/productivity relationship may undermine older worker retention rates, recruitment prospects later in life are likely to improve. Studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between incremental pay scales, steep wage tilts and the probability of recruiting older workers . Good pension arrangements have similarly been shown to diminish the chances of older workers

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being recruited. Insofar as these financial barriers to mobility are being systematically eroded, older workers may find it easier to change jobs to match their needs or re-secure employment in the event of redundancy.

For detailed findings see:Smeaton, D and White, M (2017) Britain’s Older Employees in Decline, 1990-2006: A panel analysis of pay. Work, Employment and Society, Online First, March 2017.

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Project summary #7: Phased retirement – an effective extender of working life?

Phased retirement programs and part-time working opportunities later in life may be popular but they reduce the intensive margin (working hours per week) without raising the extensive margin (working years). What is good for the individual may therefore not be good for the economy

In pursuing extended working life policy objectives a wide range of reforms and initiatives have been introduced across Europe and the UK. Key among these are schemes to facilitate more flexible working arrangements later in life such as phased retirement and reduced hours opportunities. This study investigates how flexibility in working hours affects retirement timing. It tests the assumption that decreasing weekly working hours delays retirement and extends working life. Using data from four waves of SHARE and ELSA, results show a negative influence of this shift on retirement age. The decrease is stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in liberal and Scandinavian countries. We conclude that part-time working at the end of a career reduces labor supply. Previous studies have similarly concluded that shifting from full to part-time does not delay retirement or increase the total amount of working hours before retirement, with evidence of deadweight. Phased retirement programs may therefore merely reduce the intensive margin (working hours per week) without raising the extensive margin (working years).

For detailed findings see:Hess, M, Jürgen Bauknecht, J and Pink, S (2017) Hours Flexibility and Timing of Retirement – Findings from Europe. WRW Working Paper # 6

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Project summary #8: Job change in later life – a process of marginalization?

In an examination of later life labour markets the study finds that while two thirds of job changers maintain their occupational status, of the remainder, downward mobility is more common than promotion with a full one fifth experiencing a fall in the status and skill level of their job. Implications arise for material wellbeing and ability to save for the future. Downshifting of this type does, however, carry offsetting benefits in terms of reduced levels of stress and no evidence of deteriorating job satisfaction or worsening physical demands was found.

Against a background of ageing populations and creaking welfare systems a consensus has emerged that receipt of State pensions should be delayed and working lives extended. To promote longer working lives it is recognised that people may need to change their jobs and retrain more often to keep pace with technological change and shifting needs and abilities associated with ageing. However, job mobility rates differ across the developed world, with higher rates evident in ‘liberal’ welfare regimes, while elsewhere low job mobility continues to characterise later life labour markets (LLLMs). In low mobility contexts concerns are raised that LLLMs are not working efficiently. In higher mobility countries disquiet has been voiced in relation to the potential ‘McDonaldisation’ of old age (Macnicol, 2008; Roberts, 2006; Standing, 2011) - of concern is the extent to which older workers in searching for jobs that better meet their needs and circumstances are channelled into a more narrow range of occupations characterised by lower status, pay, skill and safety. Such a process may also have implications for competition between younger and older workers. The extent of downward occupational mobility (DOM) later in life remains an under-researched issue and despite warnings of ‘marginalisation’ there is little evidence to suggest that such a pattern of work is emerging. The marginalisation hypothesis is therefore examined. It is recognised that downshifting may be a preference later in life with a desire for reductions in responsibility, workload or stress, and that downward mobility may be offset by increased satisfaction, reduced pressure, or fewer physical demands – issues the study explores.

Job mobility can refer to a wide range of transitional types including: movements between employers; between occupations; between different types of contract (employment and self-employment); and between employment statuses (employed, unemployed or inactive). Identifying optimal levels of mobility is a considerable challenge – overly high levels incur excessive transaction costs and wasted/ underinvestment in training while very low mobility may dampen economy wide innovation and undermine efficient allocation of resources to match the ebb and flow of industrial restructuring within a global economic context. Too much or too little mobility therefore has implications for productivity and economic growth. Not only is national

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economic performance at stake but so too are the employment prospects of different groups of workers. Strict EPL and low mobility may benefit ‘insiders’ i.e. well qualified individuals in good health who are in decent protected jobs but can disadvantage non-core ‘outsider’ groups such as: older workers who might be positioned at the bottom of ‘job queues’ (Reskin and Roos, 1990); the long term unemployed (also characterised by an overrepresentation of older people); individuals wishing to either change jobs to improve their person-job fit or return to the labour market after a period of inactivity due to caring, ill health or retirement. With competing national costs and benefits and uneven impacts across the labour force, difficult trade off decisions need to be taken.

Findings

Figures 1 and 2 highlight the incidence of job mobility over two yearly periods by age group and gender in the liberal economies of USA, UK and Australia; these are compared with an Eastern European country (Czech Republic), a continental European economy (Germany) and a Mediterranean country (Italy). Mobility includes change of employer, movements between FT and PT hours and job entry from unemployment. Clear differences are apparent, as expected, with the liberal economies exhibiting a notably higher incidence of mobility than other EU countries which reflects the higher levels of employment protection legislation found among the latter. Of particular interest is the extent to which job changes which involve moving to a new employer are associated with downward occupational mobility. Results for USA are not available due to restrictions in access to detailed occupation variables in HRS. To ensure sufficient sample size all European countries sampled in SHARE are pooled. Table 1 therefore presents figures from SHARE, HILDA and ELSA. The occupation variable used in HILDA was not harmonized with ELSA and SHARE, the incidence of downward mobility cannot therefore be directly compared.

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Figure 1: Incidence of job mobility by age group and country (excluding transitions to inactivity)

US Australia UK Germany Czech Italy0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

50-54 55-59 60-64 65-70

Source: ELSA (2004-2012 pooled); SHARE (2006-2012 pooled); and HILDA (2002-2012 pooled)

Figure 2: Incidence of job mobility by gender and country (excluding transitions to inactivity)

US Australia UK Germany Czech Italy0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

Men Women

Table 1 shows that job transitions among the 50+ which involve a change of employer are more likely to be associated with a promotion in the EU compared with England (16% vs 11% respectively); however the incidence of downward mobility is the same. A not insubstantial one fifth of job changes are associated with a fall in occupational status and skill level. Based on a different classificatory approach, one in ten older Australians experience downward occupational mobility.

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Table 1: Incidence of occupational mobility associated with a change of employerEngland1 EU1 Australia2

Downward occupational mobility 19% 19% 9%

No change 70% 66% 79%

Upward occupational mobility 11% 16% 12%

N 483 723 825

Notes: England and EU mobility patterns can be compared while Australian data, based on a different occupational classification, cannot. (1) To identify DOM white & blue collar jobs were differentiated using the same approach as deployed by EUROFOUND www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/ewcs/2005/classification based on four occupational groups (armed forces are excluded): High Skilled White Collar workers (HSWC), Low Skilled White Collar workers (LSWC), High Skilled Blue Collar workers (HSBC),Low Skilled Blue Collar workers (LSBC). (2) Using the ANZSCO (ABS 2013) coding included in the HILDA dataset, a change that shifted the occupation from one of the eight sub-major categories to another was classified as either upward or downward occupation mobility based on the relative skill level of the sub-major category.

Having established that one fifth of job moves in England and the EU entail downward mobility, the study considered the implications of ‘marginalisation’ for: psychological wellbeing in Australia; and for both job satisfaction and working conditions in EU and England. It is plausible that individuals have chosen to downshift later in life in order to have a more relaxed and phased transition toward retirement and therefore downward mobility may be associated with enhanced satisfaction, reduced work pressure and a reduction in physical strain. Under these circumstances the label ‘marginalised’, which carries negative connotations, might be less appropriate than the more neutral terminology used widely in American labour market literature such as ‘bridge jobs’. Downward mobility may be associated with a calculated trade-off between lower status and pay against higher satisfaction and less physical or mental strain.

For the Australian sample, the impact of job transitions on psychological wellbeing was investigated through analysis of change in Mental Component Summary scores (MCS) (derived from the SF-36, Ware and Sherbourne, 1992) over the short and longer term. Transitioning to a lower skill occupation was associated with a decline in MCS scores at the time of the transition, albeit a relatively small decline. This negative effect disappeared over time, suggesting respondents acclimatised to lower skill occupations after the first year. Gaining promotion, by contrast, was associated with improved psychological wellbeing in the short term which was sustained and strengthened over the longer term.

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For the England and European samples, ordinal logistic regression was used to explore the relationship between downward occupational mobility (compared with upward mobility and no occupational status change) and a range of outcomes (job satisfaction; work pressure/strain; physical job demands, and opportunities to develop):

Job satisfaction: A statistically significant increase in job satisfaction was associated with changing employer and with getting promotion but was not associated with downward occupational mobility. No offsetting enhancement of satisfaction could therefore be discerned as a consequence of marginalisation.

Workload/job pressure: Job change is often prompted in response to high stress and pressurised working conditions, it is not surprising therefore that the study found a significant reduction in workload and job pressure associated with employer change and with downward mobility; no significant change in pressure was associated with getting a promotion.

Physical job demands: Downward occupational mobility was not significantly associated with change in physical job demands.

Skill development: Nor was downward occupational mobility associated with opportunities to develop skills.

Conclusion

In summary, a process of marginalisation is apparent for a large minority of job changers. This downward mobility at older ages is offset in our countries of study by reduced job strain, likely reflecting the significance of work stress as a key trigger for job change. Despite downward mobility there was no significant change in psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction or the incidence of physically demanding roles. Further research is warranted to take account of the voluntariness of occupational change and to assess, from the perspective of older workers, the extent to which occupational channelling is perceived as a constrained choice.

For detailed findings see:Taylor, P and McLoughlin, C (2017, forthcoming) Psychological wellbeing and changing employment statuses of older people in Australia: Evidence from the HILDA survey. WRW Working Paper #3

Nekola, M., Principi, A., Švarc, M., Nekolová, M. and Smeaton, D (2017)Downward occupational mobility in later life: a process of marginalization?WRW Working Paper #10

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Project Summary # 9: Reverse retirement - a mixed methods study of returning to work in England, Italy and the USA: propensities, predictors and

preferences

IntroductionUsing methodological triangulation the study explores the incidence and determinants of reverse retirement in Italy, England and the USA to explore the significance of cultural and structural contexts, and to assess the significance of push factors and economic disadvantage, i.e. the extent to which returning to work is a constrained choice, given increasingly vocal concerns that increased state pension ages will exacerbate inequalities in later life.

Methods Secondary data analysis techniques are used to model patterns of employment behaviour and examine the factors associated with returning to work. In addition, to gain deeper insight into attitudes towards and experiences of retirement, analyses of depth interviews are also undertaken. This form of methodological triangulation (Denzin, 2006) allows for a more rounded understanding of the influences which may lead individuals to return to work or refrain from making such a transition. The quantitative data analysis uses three data sources: the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE); the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the American Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). The qualitative strand of the study is based on semi-structured interviews with 133 individuals in England, Italy and the US (55 across England (mean age at recruitment 61), 40 in Central Italy (mean age at recruitment 60) and 38 in North West USA (mean age at recruitment 62). Over a period of three years people were interviewed up to three times - at baseline while they were still in employment and then on two further occasions once they had retired. Issues addressed included: work experiences, the decision to retire, and retirement activity, satisfaction and orientations.

FindingsOver two yearly periods around one in ten American retirees return to work, with a little over half this incidence (6%) evident in England. Regardless of economic wellbeing reverse retirement is extremely rare in Italy.

Quantitative analyses highlight ted that reverse retirement is associated in the liberal economies of the USA and England with financial factors including retirement income, having more children, children under 30 and mortgage debts. However, a certain degree of advantage is a pre-requisite in terms of education level, good health, being of younger age and free from caring responsibilities. Opportunity structures and capacity to work therefore remain barriers for some older groups.

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The qualitative strand of evidence indicated that dissatisfaction with retirement was a further motivation for working, and one of the main sources of discontentment was the view that there were too few opportunities for social engagement and a lack of community that might facilitate casual or more regular social contact. This perception could be found among a minority of the English and Italians, but was more prevalent among the Americans many of whom talked of feeling lonely or isolated and the difficulty of making friends and finding people to ‘play with’. Americans were particularly receptive to the idea of retirement groups (whether workshops, social groups, drop-in centres or similar) - most Americans had sought and received financial advice prior to retiring, but noted a vacuum in relation to non-financial support.

The depth interviews highlighted distinct orientations toward retirement in the three countries – in Italy a family orientation was dominant alongside a perception that retirement was a time to wind down, relax and live more in the moment as in the following examples:

“Now you try to do more for the family, to better look after the home, which, inevitably, had previously been neglected. So, now the most important thing for me is my family… I now have time to devote to myself and to my loved ones.” (IT36, F, Age 60, lives with husband) “I do things more slowly, I’m not in a hurry anymore… In general, my pace is slower, it is different now … this sense of freedom is very beautiful”. (IT17, F, 68, lives alone)

For Americans a work orientation dominated narrative accounts of retirement which was often described as a time to take on new challenges rather than live a life of leisure:

“I’m looking forward to doing something different. I have not yet decided what that might be. But I am looking forward to the challenge” (USID38, M, 64, lives with wife)

“I don’t know whether you ever totally retire. I mean I don’t plan to. I retired from my career for now. I’m going to be doing something else I’m just not sure what”. (USID13, F, age 67, lives alone)

The English fell between these two extremes, were most oriented toward personal leisure but open to working on an occasional/ intermittent basis as part of a patchwork of activities embracing multiple spheres of life. Among the work oriented sub-group a desire for considerable flexibility was evident. Where the prime attraction of retirement is time sovereignty and the ability to be spontaneous,

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reduced hours do not provide the degree of flexibility desired as part-time jobs still require a regular commitment. In the following example, it is evident that leisure is prioritised over work:

“I don’t really want to be tied down to anything too rigid because I do want to travel, it might be that I can find something that I could do one day a week for six months and then have six months off to then travel or do a couple of months at the beginning and then have a block off and then a couple of months ...” (UK: F, 54, lives alone)

Zero hours contracts could meet the flexibility needs of these retirees. Although widely criticised as depriving people of employment rights, security and financial stability, these are not the job characteristics which older workers are necessarily searching for. One 58 year old English man had found a highly flexible opportunity which he felt would work well and allow him the spontaneity he strives for:

“...if there’s no work then I don’t go, simple as that, that’s how I want it, very flexible. They have a bank of people so they’re ring me up and say ‘Do you want to come up Monday help out?’ and I’ll say ‘Sorry, no, I’m going shopping with the wife’ ... ‘Okay no worries’ and they’ll ring somebody else so it’s quite easy going..” (UK, M, 58, lives with wife)

These individuals differed somewhat from the Americans by seeing themselves primarily as retired but would appreciate and benefit from opportunities to work sporadically. The evidence calls into question the utility or accuracy of the term ‘reverse retirement’. Most of the returners regard themselves as primarily retired and saw their jobs as supplemental; part and parcel of their retired lives. A more accurate description of the phenomenon in England might therefore be ‘working in retirement’. The Americans were less likely to describe themselves as retired on re-entering the labour market.

ConclusionsNotions of ‘successful’ or ‘adaptive’ ageing as people enter and progress through their retirement years have been recognised as culturally contingent (Nimrod, 2008 Chung & Dodder 1996; Dein & Huline-Dickens 1997; Torres 2002) and findings from this study affirm the significance of context dependency. Despite international policy convergence around the extended working life agenda, the meaning of retirement, lifestyle orientations, and the role of work in retirement were still found to be quite distinct in Italy, USA and England. A one size fits all policy agenda, such as the normative goals of ‘active’ or ‘productive’ ageing may be seen as a useful antidote to traditional conceptualisations of retirement as a time of disengagement and decline but risks an overly homogenised and prescriptive expectation of later life.

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In relation to the economic push vs lifestyle choice debate, previous studies have largely concluded that financial factors do not typically play a significant role in reverse retirement decisions which reflect instead a voluntary retirement lifestylechoice. A more complex relationship between financial factors and the decision to return to work emerged from this study. In Italy, cultural norms, a challenging economic environment and workplace policies combine to erect significant barriers to reverse retirement regardless of individual financial need. It should also be noted that the need to take personal responsibility for adequate retirement income is arguably lowest in Italy – on average, among the 65+, 72 per cent of Italians’ pension is from the first pillar of state provision compared with 50 per cent for the English and 38 per cent for Americans. In the USA and UK pensioners are more dependent on occupational and private pensions as sources of income.

In the English context, although retirement income levels are not associated with unretirement there are indications of wider financial considerations being relevant, including outstanding debts and having children under 30; depth interviews also surfaced strong financial motivations existing alongside other considerations (social in particular) and decisions were rarely monocausal. In the American context, the highest earners were least likely to unretire while middle income groups exhibited the highest propensity and depth interviews revealed that a strong financial anxiety often underscored decisions to return to work even among the more affluent.

American retirees were also pushed back into work disappointed with opportunities for social engagement - consistent with earlier studies which have found disappointment with retirement to be a determinant of work returns (Lahey et al, 2006) and reflective of research by Pattacchini and Engelhardt (2016), which found that the size and density of American’s social network declined in retirement. However, while financial push factors and retirement disappointments were clearly identifiable, interviews revealed a more complex picture as employment was often described by the Americans in positive terms, as a new challenge or a new phase of life.

On the whole, those with greatest financial need are also the most disadvantaged in terms of health, education, or patchy employment histories (including women who have raised families) – these are key barriers to working. To the extent that unretirement is largely related to advantaged circumstances, individual capacity and demand side opportunity constraints act to prevent reverse retirement from being a viable solution to poverty in later life.

Policies should not only address employment opportunities and flexibilities but should also focus on a broad range of support for those in retirement given that provision for the retired in many locales, across each of the three countries, seems weakly developed. Retirees highlighted too few opportunities for social engagement and community life and a lack of basic information advice and guidance that might

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smooth what is potentially one of the most challenging life transitions individuals make. A desire for workshops, drop in centres, networks of support and other provision was widely expressed and described succinctly by one 59 year old Italian woman who spontaneously described what would have helped her transition: “There should be something for us pensioners… they should give us a Guide for services for older or retired people. I would like something for those who are retiring, to help prepare for hobbies, or interests… orientation courses, strategies to apply just before the transition to retirement. Yes, a guide to help us to psychologically and concretely prepare for retirement”.

Finally, given the extent to which reverse retirement is associated with more advantaged circumstances, the policy shift toward extended working lives would seem to carry a risk of insufficient protection for some groups and an exacerbation of inequalities in older age.

For detailed findings see:Smeaton, D., Di Rosa, M., and Principi, A. (2017) Reverse retirement - a mixed methods study of returning to work in England, Italy and the USA: propensities, predictors and preferences. WRW Working Paper #4 – submitted for publication.

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Project summary #10: Does retirement open opportunities for a more physically active lifestyle after leaving sedentary work?

One legacy of the 20th century labour market is a growth in the volume of sedentary occupations. As more and more retirees are leaving inactive jobs, this study examines how people change their level and type of physical activity across the domains of transport, housework and leisure following a longitudinal qualitative sample of recent retirees in England, Italy and North-western United States. Feeling mentally tired and having little time left for oneself at the end of a working day are key obstacles to physical activity while still in paid employment. Retirement might therefore be expected to improve physical activity (PA). A key finding from the analysis of change over the retirement transition is that PA is a lifelong habit and people don’t make dramatic changes after leaving sedentary type work.

IntroductionIt is estimated that one in four adults are insufficiently active. Physical inactivity can escalate the incidence of obesity and associated chronic illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes, and foreshorten healthy life expectancies. Not only do many of us engage in too little sport/leisure physical activity (PA) but a growth in the hazard of excessive occupational sitting is also increasingly recognised as a health and safety issue in the workplace. This study followed 39 people as they left sedentary occupations for up to two years into their retirement. Changes in self-reported PA relating to transport, household chores and leisure-time (the three World Health Organisation domains of PA) were compared in terms of variety, duration and intensity. This was supplemented by respondents’ accounts of motivations, enablers and barriers regarding their activity levels.

FindingsRespondents (23 women and 16 men) came from a variety of sedentary type jobs (e.g., data entry, call centre telephonist, administration, management) and were, on average, retired 17 months at the time of their last interview. Average age at retirement was 62 years. On the whole, self-reported PA in terms of duration, intensity and variety, increased during the transition to retirement across household, transport and leisure-time domains. As reported initially, the PA of working interviewees was generally dominated by household maintenance (e.g., cleaning, gardening, DIY) and this continued to be the case when people retired. An increase in these activities was anticipated in respondents’ plans for retirement and the home became a priority in the earlier months of retirement. Changes were observed in the variety, intensity and duration of home maintenance as retirees tackled long neglected cleaning and clearing,

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painting and decorating, and garden tasks. Men in particular took on building projects around the home and sometimes for family and friends.

Continuity in the type of leisure-time PA was a common theme. Those with a history of certain sports and leisure-time PA tended to maintain or increase the duration or intensity of these activities when retired. Change in variety was found in the transport domain as respondents consciously eschewed the car for walking and cycling as a means to increase their fitness. One 64-year-old English male, previously in a management role, explained that because he and his wife tend to walk places they intentionally take their car out every week or so to give it a run: ‘We go out shopping most days, you know, as I say it’s combining the exercise with something else … We often don’t take the car out for more than a whole week at a time usually.’ Moreover, some respondents added to their fitness levels through physically active volunteer opportunities such as gardening and coaching sport.

Conditions that seemed to influence positive changes and maintain PA levels were:

Medical advice to increase fitness levels Fitness combined with social opportunities (especially for women) Commitment to fitness fees or a fitness buddy Dog walking Devices that provide physical monitoring data

Factors described as presenting obstacles to preferred levels or types of PA:

Health and mobility problems Caring responsibilities A lack of companions with whom to engage in PA (whether sporting activities or

simply going for a walk) Costs of club membership Cold wet winter weather Poor motivation levels

Although on average work-retirement transition trends show a drop in PA as retirees on the whole do not compensate for previous work PA (Banks et al., 2014), it can be expected that people retiring from sedentary jobs are a separate case because their PA almost exclusively occurs outside of work time. As shown in Figure 1, outside of work, time devoted to PA was perceived to increase in all domains. The household context accounted for the majority of PA time both before and during retirement.

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Figure 1: Self-reported changes by PA domain (typical week, average minutes)

Work/Vol Transport Home Leisure0

100

200

300

400

500

600

wave 1 wave 2 wave 3

It should be noted, however, that the increased time devoted to household chores may not represent an overall improvement in physical activity as in many instances the intensity (and therefore energy expended) declines. There was a widespread sense of slowing down once retired, as in the following examples:

“Things definitely take longer to do because I know I haven’t got a time limit on it, you know, I hoovered today because I knew you were coming at two thirty, so it did give me a time limit, otherwise normally I might get up and hoover one corner of it and then I’ll sit down and watch telly for a bit and get up and do the next little ... so it might take me all day just to hoover the sitting room” (ID42, woman, aged 54, lives alone).

“Everything is done more leisurely, in a leisurely manner. So no rushing or bustling …you can take longer over doing something that you would have rushed around doing . Everything takes twice as long because you’ve slowed down... yes I’ll stop for a cup of tea you know.” (ID65, woman, age 67, lives alone)

“In some ways I lead a much slower pace of life. Tasks seem to take longer. If we’re in the house sometimes I’ll just sit and think. I think sometimes my wife thinks “What are you doing?” and I'm just sitting there thinking”. (ID41, man, age 59, lives with wife)

“When I’m pottering on in the house and there’s nothing much on you think I haven’t really done much today but saying that I always had the fear of loneliness but I’ve actually found out I like my own company. I like putting music on and pottering and sometimes I’ve just got to give myself that time because you can think ‘oh I haven’t

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done anything, I haven’t been anywhere, I haven’t seen anybody’ and then I think ‘yes I’ve had a quite nice day.” (ID43, woman, age 58, lives with husband)

In each of these examples the retirees were unconcerned with their slowing pace of life, regarding it as a natural and inevitable process. In some instances taking more or longer walks or other forms of exercise compensated for the general slow-down but in other cases the reduced levels/intensity of physical activity were a risk for longer term health outcomes.

ConclusionsFor the growing numbers of sedentary workers who already rely on activities outside work to maintain their physical wellbeing, this study found that retirement can increase opportunities for physical fitness. The establishment of good PA habits should therefore begin prior to retirement. Notwithstanding health and family issues that can undermine daily activities, interventions to improve PA during the retirement transition should actively: disseminate the benefits of PA for longer healthy lives (including fitness prescribing); provide more PA opportunities during inclement weather; offer advice on time management; and promote physically active volunteer opportunities.

For detailed findings see:Vegeris, S. (2017) Does retirement open opportunities for a more physically active lifestyle after leaving sedentary work? In progress

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Project summary #11: Voluntary retirement motivations and views on changes to State Pension age

IntroductionEmployment participation has been increasing over the past decade or so, reflecting shifts in the pensions, benefits and employment relations policy landscape; with fewer institutionalised financial incentives to retire early and improved rights to remain employed. Nevertheless, in the lead up to SPA, participation rates remain below 50 per cent. It would therefore appear that more needs to be done in response to health, caring and redundancy related involuntary retirement (DWP, 2014a); but voluntary retirees also warrant attention. Most workers leaving the labour market before SPa do so voluntarily according to survey evidence (Figure 1, source: ELSA 2012) – either while still young and fit, to be with family, or dissatisfied with their jobs.

Figure 1: Primary reason for retiring

OtherTo coincide with partner

Caring responsibilityIll health

Redundancy or early retirement incentiveNegative job attributes

To be with familyWhile young and fit

Reached retirement age

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Retired early Retired

A qualitative study of 55 employees in the UK making the transition to retirement seeks to: flesh out evidence from survey data by examining in-depth motivations to stop working voluntarily; examine views on returning to work; and explore attitudes toward an SPa of 68. Insights can shed light on what more can be done to facilitate longer working lives and the extent to which such a goal is consistent with preferences.

FindingsAs older worklers pass through their 50s the attractions of a wide range of interests and a desire for spontaneity act as a strong pull toward retirement. These aspirations are both self-oriented (for example, wishing to improve personal wellbeing or physical health; to try something new in life; travel; or pursue creative ambitions) and other-oriented (for example, devoting more time to friends and family; or volunteering); and are set against a backdrop of health considerations and a sense

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that time is running out. Evidence from the study would suggest that some voluntary early retirees are taking a significant financial risk in their retirement timing but a health / wealth trade-off was explicit in some accounts of retiring with a belief that there were more important things than money:

“I’ve had a lot of deaths in a couple of years and it did change my outlook. Money, although we need it and it is important, to me I don’t crave it; it’s not the be all and end all of anything. It costs me nothing to go out and have a walk and as I said, £1million won’t buy me a minute of time.” (Male, age 61, physical job)

Retirement may not live up to expectations, some are leaving work overwhelmed, in a state of fatigue, with a compromised ability to think the choice through carefully. It is also the case that some voluntary retirement reflects constrained choice in the face of negative job attributes. In each of these instances, although interviewees were resistant to the idea of delaying their retirement, even with the offer of reduced hours, opportunities to ‘reverse retire’ at a later stage would be welcomed. It is therefore essential that recruitment rates are improved to facilitate employment re-entry later in life. Also noteworthy is a preference at this stage of life for highly flexible working arrangements. Part time jobs are perceived as a commitment many of the retired are unwilling to make but zero hours contracts and bank work do meet preferences for more casual contractual terms.

In relation to ongoing increases in SPa, negative views were voiced. The qualitative interviews provide insights into why resistance to EWL beyond age 65 remains entrenched, and which aspects of EWL are perceived as most problematic. Most interviewees felt that the system was not flexible enough and that having a single pensionable age was unrealistic, failing to acknowledge the accumulated impact of a lifetime in physically challenging jobs in particular. Other occupations such as teaching, regarded as particularly stressful, were also singled out as presenting challenges later in life. Some respondents raised concerns about the difficulty of coping in jobs in their late 60s given their experience of slowing mental responses and feeling more tired: “I’m exhausted most of the time, to be honest.” (Male, 60, sedentary job).

In addition to fears of unexpected declines in health, it was also noted that continuing for too long in physical jobs was a risk to health. Earlier retirement was seen as vital to prevent the onset or deterioration of health, as in the following example: “ more and more is demanded. Maybe when you’re young you can work at that level of intensity but I think you can’t do that forever without it destroying people, destroying their health” (Woman, 60, standing occupation)

One major and common objection to later pensionable ages was the possibility of not surviving long enough to reach SPA or not surviving long thereafter. Not only were people concerned that they would not get the opportunity to enjoy a sufficiently long

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retirement, but they were particularly aggrieved at the prospect of having paid into a system all their lives they may not receive fair returns.

While productivity implications might be regarded as a concern for employers primarily, rather than for ageing employees, in fact several interviewees raised such issues as problematic. Older workers do not wish to feel that they are not contributing as well as other employees or compared with their own performance when younger, as noted by one 56 year old woman: “I don’t think you have the energy, and …how the hell am I going to come up with ideas and have the thought process when I’m 70. …I have got to that point, I haven’t got the drive and energy that at my level I should have.”

Perceptions of under-performance are a threat to self-esteem and dignity. The context of new forms of working is relevant - with performance related pay and performance appraisals widespread, older workers find themselves exposed to the pressure of bureaucratic control and a hardening of the employment relationship which may compromise wellbeing if contributions are slowing.

ConclusionGiven the large numbers of older workers who do exit the labour market prematurely, voluntarily or otherwise, it is critical that recruitment rates are improved to facilitate employment re-entry later in life. In tandem, greater flexibility of contractual arrangements are also needed. There remains considerable resistance to higher State Pension ages with a view that some occupations are particularly unsustainable later in life. A perceived need for greater flexibility of SPa as practiced in USA, Germany and elsewhere is therefore prevalent.

For detailed findings see:Smeaton, D (2016) Voluntary retirement motivations and views on changes to State Pension age. A submission to the DWP 2016-2017 Cridland review of the State Pension age

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Project summary #12: Optionality of work. Does the Option of Continued Work Later in Life Result in a More Optimistic View of Retirement?

BackgroundThis paper explores the extent to which flexible labor markets, and opportunities presented in such an environment, impact the outlook of older individuals even prior to a retirement transition. The underlying hypothesis is that the optionality of continued work later in life can impact one’s outlook about retirement—regardless of whether this option is exercised.

MethodsThe data for this study come from two sources. The first dataset consists of a series of in-depth 90-minute in-person and by-telephone qualitative interviews conducted in the US (38), UK (55) and Italy (40). The cross-country comparisons provide a glimpse into how the optionality of work differs across cultures. Generally speaking, along the spectrum of flexible labor markets and continued work in retirement, the U.S. is at one end, with a flexible labor market for older adults, and Italy is at the other end, with an expectation of labor force exit at older ages. The UK experience is between the two. One drawback of the qualitative data is that small sample sizes might not allow for subgroup analyses. To address this limitation, the data from the qualitative interviews was supplemented with data from the large-scale Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Once each respondent’s work history is constructed, we identify the survey wave just prior to the individual’s first job transition following career employment. We examine the individual’s expectations about retirement and the optionality of continued work as of that interview and compare the outcomes with those in retirement.

FindingsFirst, respondents across the three countries differ substantially with respect to their plans for continued work in retirement. Less than one quarter (24%) of the U.S. respondents planned to exit the labor force with no expressed interest in either part-time paid work or volunteerism. In contrast, among the UK respondents, 42% had no plans to work or volunteer in retirement. Among the Italian respondents, a clear majority (70%) had no plans for continued work or volunteering in retirement.

An examination of interview transcripts suggested a bifurcation among those who planned to work in retirement, between: 1) those who viewed work as a contingency plan, for whom the outlook was generally positive; and 2) those who viewed work as a necessity for financial reasons, for whom the outlook was generally negative.

A multivariate analysis of CESD scores just prior to transition and post transition from career employment reveals that men who reported that they plan to work beyond age 65 with certainty—arguably those with no choice but to work—had

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significantly lower mental health outcomes relative to those with the option of continued work or who had no plans for continued work past age 65. This result holds in both the univariate context and controlling for known determinants of retirement outcomes.

DiscussionThis paper set out to explore the relationship between the optionality of work in retirement and individuals’ overall outlook about their retirement years. We hypothesized that individuals who viewed work in retirement as an option would also have a more favorable outlook for their retirement years. This relationship is intuitive on several levels. First, individuals who feel they can return to the workforce are more likely to view their financial situation as being more stable. If existing resources are insufficient, a number of options exist beyond just a reduction in one’s standard of living. The possibility of returning to work could also be a way to maintain social relationships and to increase engagement should the retirement experience come up short with respect to these work-life dimensions. In contrast, without the possibility of returning to work, we hypothesized that individuals would view retirement as a permanent state with limited choices regarding finances, social life, and engagement.

We find that there is indeed a relationship between the optionality of continued work later in life and retirement satisfaction and overall well-being, but that the relationship holds among those for whom work truly is an option, as opposed to a financial necessity. This finding could be of assistance to policymakers who are interested in the potential positive impacts of promoting continued work later in life.

For detailed findings see:

Cahill, K., Smeaton, D. and Principi, A. (2016) Does the Option of Continued Work Later in Life Result in a More Optimistic View of Retirement? WRW Working Paper #8

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Project summary #13: Adjusting to Retirement in Three National Contexts

Introduction

In a review of psychological perspectives on the changing experience of retirement, Schultz and Wang note (2011: 8) “retirees actively shape their experiences in retirement. As active selves, retirees reflect on and evaluate their experiences [and] are able to modify their environment to shape their retirement experiences”. In a similar vein, Gale (2014) also highlights new retirement lifestyles, emphasising the importance of ‘taking control’ the retirement transition is described as the point at which boomers can learn to become: ‘architects of their future...to shift their attitudes and behaviours so that they can reclaim their right to live differently and well” (Gale, 2014:148). Such perspectives emphasise the salience of self-efficacy, agency and proactive behaviour in shaping retired life, but can produce an under socialised conception of the individual agent. In theorising retirement transitions and outcomes it is important to account also for the extent to which retired lifestyles and ‘choices’ are constrained or facilitated by broader opportunities, cultural context and social structure. Social position, labour markets, welfare and pension systems set the context in which retirement pathways unfold. Resources such as human capital (skills, education) economic capital (income and wealth), health and social capital (social skills, networks, proximal and distal bonds) also influence retirement lifestyles, prospects and satisfaction (Price and Nesteruk, 2010; van Solinge & Henkens, 2005; Dykstra, 2006). Opportunities may also be more locally determined, with community hubs, associational activity and local facilities playing an important role in the promotion of social integration. In a systematic review of the factors which contribute to a better life in and adjustment to retirement, Barbosa et al (2016) examined 115 articles; they found that community resources (and variety of local opportunities) were under-researched (assessed in just eight studies) but had largely positive effects. Barbosa et al (2016) concluded that while individual factors are pivotal to understanding behaviour they are not sufficient, with a need also to investigate institutional, social and cultural dimensions to extend knowledge on retirement adjustment predictors.

Several theoretical frameworks have been deployed to predict and interpret retirement adjustment. One early theory conceptualised retirement as a process of disengagement as individuals increasingly withdraw from roles and relationships (Cumming and Henry, 1961). This perspective has been extended by socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 1992; Carstensen et al., 1999) which describes social contraction as an adaptive strategy insofar as people increasingly focus on more meaningful activities as they age with evidence that retirees who reduce their range of activities do not exhibit declines in subjective wellbeing (Nimrod et al, 2008). As a theoretical approach, ‘disengagement’ has become less central in recent years (Johnson and Mutchler, 2014) particularly as an ‘active ageing’ agenda has increasingly taken hold across Europe (WHO 2002; European Commission, 2014). Countering disengagement theory, activity theory (Havighurst, 1961) emphasises the extent to which successful aging and positive adaptation is associated with finding new activities and remaining socially engaged to replace the structure of work. Rather than emphasising activities, role theory (Ashforth, 2001) stresses the importance of social roles for identity and wellbeing with those most invested in their jobs and strong work identities seen to be most at risk of compromised wellbeing over the retirement transition unless new, valued roles are

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adopted. Continuity theory views the retirement transition period in terms of continuity of lifestyles and core values rather than an abrupt break with the past (Atchley 1989; 2000; Hooyman and Kiyak 2000). These generalised theories have been criticised as too crude and simplified to explain the retirement transition, with more recent analyses highlighting the importance of lifecourse perspectives which acknowledge the complex interactions between individual personalities, family circumstances, health and the multiple institutional contexts in which lives develop giving rise to considerable variation in the retirement process and subsequent outcomes (Calasanti 1996; Nordenmark and Stattin 2009). The evolution of these theoretical perspectives also reflects shifts in the circumstances of retirement, which have been undergoing significant change in Western societies as an increasingly individualised experience, with greater variety of timing and pattern.

The extent to which the transition from work to retirement leads to positive, neutral or negative outcomes depends, in part, on whether the transition was voluntary (Szinovacz & Davey, 2005), individual and situational resources (Hobfall, 2002; Wang, 2007) personality and circumstances (Robinson et al, 2011). Several studies have developed typologies to describe successful adjustment to retirement (Hewitt et al, 2010; Wang, 2007; Schlossberg, 2004; Kloep and Hendry, 2006; Robinson et al, 2011; Price and Nesteruk, 2010) with considerable heterogeneity evident. Each of these studies also encounter a minority who do not adapt well, exhibiting declines in life satisfaction or wellbeing, variously described as: ‘retreaters’ (Schlossberg, 2004); ‘there is not much to live for’ (Kloep and Hendry, 2006); ‘restriction, regret and decline’ (Robinson et al, 2011); and ‘disenchanted’ (Price and Nesteruk, 2010). Based on a review of multiple studies Szinovacz (2003) observes that while most retirees exhibit positive adaptation profiles, a significant minority (between 10-30%) experience problems and reductions in wellbeing following retirement.

In this paper, the transition from work to retirement is investigated in three national contexts (England, USA and Italy) and although ‘retirement’ is recognised as a journey or a process which evolves over time, studying the transition phase can provide valuable insights as choices and opportunities early in retirement can influence subsequent longer term pathways. A better understanding of early retirement experiences and adaptations can inform forward looking policies which deploy a preventative logic and promote positive trajectories from middle age rather than reacting to chronic conditions such as loneliness later in life. Key research questions driving the study include – under what circumstances do individuals adapt well to retirement; what retirement lifestyles are favoured in different national contexts; how important are social/environmental contexts as opposed to individual resources in adapting to retirement (i.e. agency vs structure); and what are the key sources of disappointment?

The article makes the following contributions: first, to theory, by emphasising the need to complement the contributions of individualist perspectives on ageing with a more robust conceptualisation of social context; and secondly to policy and practice by highlighting the significant role that local authorities, community groups and employers can play in promoting retirement adaptation and developing retirement interventions.

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Methods

In order to explore the influence of social context and opportunity structures (both local and national) on the experience of ‘retirement’ this paper examines a sample of 135 older people aged 55+ interviewed over 3 years as they made the transition from work to retirement in Italy, USA and England – each characterised by distinct cultural orientations and welfare regimes. Project summary #3 above describes these three national settings (highlighting cultural, labour market and welfare differences). The focus of summary #3 is on the plans and aspirations of individuals on the cusp of retirement while this summary follows retirees as they make the transition into new lives to explore outcomes. Using qualitative methods, the voices of these retirees are introduced to gain insights into: their retirement journeys; pleasures and disappointments; social roles and activities; and the opportunities and obstacles encountered in pursuing aspirations. Interviewees quoted below are referred to with a fictitious name, their age at w1 is provided and their country of residence is indicated by EN, US or IT, representing England, USA and Italy respectively.

The study ascertains satisfaction and adaptation by means of cognitive and affective subjective evaluations; questions and prompts during interviews included elicitations of how happy retirees were with retirement in general (and specifically how satisfied with their social life, physical activity and other aspects of their retired lives), perceptions of the positives and negatives of retirement and any disappointments.

Findings

Country Overviews

Across the three country samples a wide variety of ‘adaptive’ lifestyles were evident, variously focussed on family, leisure, creativity, volunteering or new employment. For some the pleasure of retirement was strongly associated with liberation from work – whether the time commitment or aspects of the job itself; for others, who may have enjoyed their working lives and miss aspects of their job and professional identity, retirement is nevertheless enjoyed for the opportunity to pursue pleasurable activities, time with family and friends or to adopt/expand new social roles.

A difference that was immediately apparent when analysing the cross-national data was how few of the US interviewees fully relinquished contact with the labour market on retirement; moreover, even those who did stop working tended to discuss a possible future return to employment. The reasons for this were various and included issues around access to health insurance as well as broader financial concerns, but also a sense of meaning and purpose derived from work, and feeling a need to be in employment in order to remain connected to society as a whole. Other studies which have highlighted a distinct American culture include Hershey (2007) who notes: “From as early as adolescence, Americans are indoctrinated to focus on the value of work, earnings, material goods, achievement and independence.” Other factors were the greater distances from extended family in the US sample, and the ready availability of labour market opportunities – older people in the US did not generally seem to anticipate or encounter problems in returning to work when they chose to do so. US interviewees who found themselves unhappy in retirement therefore tended simply to return to paid work rather than seeking to ‘replace’ work routines with volunteering, leisure or family

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care commitments. For Americans a work orientation therefore dominated narrative accounts of retirement which was often described as a time to take on new challenges rather than live a life of leisure, as described by one 64 year old man: “I’m looking forward to doing something different. I have not yet decided what that might be. But I am looking forward to the challenge”.

By contrast, retirees in Italy did not generally express a desire to return to paid work, or anticipate that there would be many opportunities to do so. A sense of a traditional, permanent withdrawal from the labour market was central to the culture of retirement and to laws regulating the retirement transition, and was also sometimes expressed in terms of a moral duty to make way for younger people in a context of very high youth unemployment. This was not problematic where people had adjusted their expectations accordingly, but made for more difficult transitions where people would have liked to replace some aspects of their work but found themselves without opportunities to do so. A family orientation was dominant among the Italian retirees alongside a perception that retirement was a time to wind down, relax and live more in the moment.

The English sample fell somewhere between these two extremes; people here tended to present retirement as marking a decisive ‘step-change’ in the nature of their engagement with the world of work, even if opportunities for future work might still exist. While people were often interested in both paid and unpaid work opportunities following retirement, they were keen to ensure that these should be undertaken on their own terms and often rejected the idea of a regular commitment. The English were most oriented toward personal leisure but open to working on an occasional/ intermittent basis as part of a patchwork of activities embracing multiple spheres of life. An emphasis on the right to work has a strong history in the US where abolition of compulsory retirement and age discrimination legislation were introduced in 1986. For the UK such developments have a much more recent history - age discrimination legislation was introduced in 2009 with abolition of compulsory retirement in 2011. The UK is thereby in a process of transitioning away from retirement as a clearly defined status transition toward a notably more blurred demarcation.

Activity theory adequately describes the retirement trajectory and processes of adaptation of many retirees - particularly the English given their leisure orientation; while role theory best accounts for the common Italian retirement pathway toward new or expanded family oriented roles – mother, housewife, grandparent, carer. Given the dominant work orientation of Americans across and beyond the retirement transition, continuity theory captures well their retirement profiles over time. Overall, however, no single theory accounts for the very wide range of aspirations, retirement trajectories and chosen lifestyles – all of which can be described as adaptive, accompanied on the whole by a sense of satisfaction and contentment.

In all three countries there were nevertheless groups of retirees that have not adapted to their satisfaction.

Dissatisfactions

Across the three countries, those who were less satisfied with their retirement so far were often dealing with health problems, whether their own or in their immediate family. Caring

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commitments and worry meant they were not enjoying the sense of freedom they had hoped for when leaving work. Those on limited incomes also faced constraints, but this did not appear to affect their enjoyment of retirement to the same extent. Other sources of dissatisfaction were also evident with both cross cutting issues and disappointments arising due to specific local, cultural and regulatory circumstances.

It is noteworthy that retirement satisfaction/adaptation was not a binary phenomenon - a continuum was evident from the broadly content (but who perhaps expressed a few niggles) to those who articulated a deep disappointment. In probing different aspects of their retired life it was clear that people could be very happy with some dimensions while dissatisfied with others. Understanding which particular aspects of retirement were not meeting expectations can provide helpful insights for policy and practice designed to support people through and beyond the retirement transition. Key dimensions of disappointment include: time structure/the burden of agency; economic resources; environmental resources and opportunities for social engagement; and opportunities for employment, each summarised below.

Time structureDisappointment with retirement for some revolved around wanting more structure or committed time, feeling time just slips by or is wasted, as described by Walter (EN03, age 60): “It’s a bit frustrating, I’m frittering time away” and Mary (EN42, age 54), “I haven’t done as much as I was expecting to have done, where’s the time gone?, you know, the day is gone and it’s another day and I think, ‘Well, I didn’t do all these things I wanted to do. I’m on a wave, you know, sometimes I’ll book things on my diary three or four days just to make it feel like I’ve got some sort of order to my life”. Some people anticipated from the outset that they would need time structure and commitment, in the sense of having external obligations outside the household or family, when they retired. For others, this only became apparent once the retirement ‘honeymoon’ had passed. For Jack (EN04, age 64) who had disliked his job, the initial four months of feeling as if he were on holiday had been very enjoyable but then ‘the novelty wore off’, leaving him feeling ‘at a loose end, drifting’, especially as his wife was still at work, with no plans to retire, he commented “my life...it’s far more empty than I anticipated…”

Young and Schuller (1991) argue that it is the texture of time that is important; a mixture of routines and contrasts, including at least some activities that have ‘the effortful character of work’, is seen to produce optimal levels of satisfaction; Jun and Fisher (2012) similarly argue that a balance between constrained and discretionary time is important to maintain wellbeing. Furthermore, activities which are seen simply as passing time are generally viewed as not offering the same benefits as those experienced as personally meaningful (Jonsson et al., 2000; Nimrod, 2008).

This need for time structure and task variation varies, however, with individual temperament. Many embraced retirement as a time for spontaneity, a time to take each day as it comes without a roadmap or structure. Bauger and Bongaardt (2016) have similarly suggested that retired people relish increased autonomy, feeling little need of routine, while Ekerdt and Koss (2016) also argue that the importance of establishing and discussing routines in retirement may lie more in their function as identity work among older people rather than in actually structuring how time is spent.

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Many retirees rejected opportunities to work or volunteer precisely because they wanted to avoid any commitment or externally imposed routine which had characterised their working lives, as one 59 year old Italian woman commented: “I absolutely do not want to volunteer. I do not want to commit, I do not feel like it. I'm fine this way… because if you are volunteering it's kind of a job... you have to comply with rules, you are subject to timetables” (IT01). Respondents in this group were much happier offering help on an ad hoc basis, using their time and skills while avoiding the ’tie’ of an obligation: “I know some people find not having that structure very difficult, for me it was a joy being able to do what I wanted to. To actually put in place a structure where I’m now thinking ‘I’ve got to do that or I’ll let them down’ is not what I wanted”. (EN29, age 62, woman)

In a similar vein, Vivienne (EN56, age 62) was very happy with the commitment she had agreed in advance to provide childcare for her grandchildren twice a week but was less comfortable with last-minute requests for help on other days, and disliked feeling that she needed to provide ‘an alibi’ for not agreeing. Walter (EN03, age 60) also resented family expectations and the unspoken assumption by his working wife and daughter that he would do all the cooking and housework once he retired.

The burden of agencyLinked to the issue of needing time structure, many talked of the need to work at retirement, to stay on top of life and not drift. Widespread reflexive agency was evident with some retirees observing the need to be vigilant and organised. Well aware of their need to create and maintain a desirable lifestyle it was, however, experienced at times as a strain, requiring effort, an issue one 56 year old woman described as a ‘battle’. Tim (EN40, age 59) conveyed the need to find social or sports clubs to join: “it can be quite lonely if you didn’t sort of get out and about. You do need to make that effort otherwise you could get quite isolated, yes, it’s a lonely country I think unless you do things”.

One year into retirement, Reginald (EN19, age 64), described the need to be more organised, to plan further ahead and take more control of his life: “In every aspect of your life you know you are responsible really aren’t you for your health, you’re responsible for your wellbeing, you know. If I don’t go out and ride my bike or if I don’t go out walking nobody I can blame but myself. So I think really the onus is upon you as an individual. I’ve always been busy and I just feel that maybe I’m not as organised as I should be. I could organise my life a little bit more efficiently”.

Family circumstancesIn some instances dissatisfaction once retired arose due to marital tensions. In the following example Luciana, a former primary school teacher discussed how narrow she felt her life had become in retirement, overly focussed on the home sphere. The quality of the relationship with her husband seemed to be a decisive factor: “I would say I’m not satisfied at the moment, mostly since I would like some commitments out of the home, or even inside the home but with other people. I am lacking in the social aspects of life. I cannot change things since this depends mostly on my husband. I counted very much on the company of my husband once retired but he has become lifeless. He does not want to do anything”. (IT16, age 63)

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Income constraints/Affordable activitiesNot all low income retirees were disappointed nor all wealthy retirees satisfied. The view that retirement lifestyles and aspirations were hampered by a lack of money was, however, found among the English sample, most notably among the women interviewed. The Italian’s were less likely to express concerns with their incomes and where the Americans voiced financial related anxieties, they often chose to return to work as a solution.

Victoria (EN43, age 59) retired with an occupational pension and has a high earning ‘financially astute’ partner. She therefore regards herself as lucky to have no money worries and feels very ‘comfortable’ in her retirement. Yet, despite her affluent status, Victoria still expressed consternation at what she saw as the prohibitively high costs of some learning experiences, identifying affordable activities, courses and similar opportunities as a key gap in provision for retirees: “Some of them [courses] are really really expensive, I mean we’ve got the Glass Centre and you can go during the day and do the glass blowing….[but] six hundred and eighty pounds! I’m thinking ‘my God that’s my weekends and my holidays .. are you kidding it’s really expensive to do’. There really is [a gap in affordable courses] but I think what will happen is as more people retire they’ll see there’s a market of like young retired people who wants to do things like that and have money to do it but not six hundred and eighty pounds a term type of thing. There’s definitely a market there”.

Fiona (EN65, age 67) is broadly content with most aspects of her retirement but her modest income is limiting the number and range of activities she can get involved with leaving her with a sense that her retired years could be more enjoyable: “ I’d like to do more but it’s the cost really. I can’t do all things, if I want to do caravanning, then I haven't got the money to do [Art] courses…. I keep saying I should do tai chi. But it’s cost again. They [free activities] do exist in other places because I know because I’ve got friends down in Devon, she said “it’s free down at our local we just get together, have a giggle and do it”. Donna (EN01, age 61) is a more extreme case, she is very concerned about the future and feels her opportunities in retirement are highly constrained by her limited financial resources: “I could do equity release on the house, I’ve been advised not to, some people think it’s a good idea, some people don’t, it would enable me to have a lump sum behind me… it is all about money at the end of the day, I'm just worried about spending money … when I go shopping now, it sounds silly but I will deny myself certain things, I will get my dog’s food which isn't cheap, but I won’t buy certain fruit if it’s dear. I don’t want to go to the shopping mall because that’s spending money when I'm not earning the money. Everything is so extortionately dear, to even join a decent gym is expensive, to go out for a lunch is expensive, to put petrol in your car… [Am I] happy in general? No. I just think my whole life now has peaked and I think to myself, ‘Is this what life is all about?’ Every day is the same and I am getting older and I thought, ‘I just want to die.”

Other retirees also find themselves being thrifty, such as Mary (EN42, age 56) who has retired with a full occupational pension but observes “ it’s not a lot, you know, it sounds like that will be good, I can live on it but I can’t do anything extra. So it doesn’t provide me with a pension that I can live and still go out and do everything I did before because it’s not even half my wages... on a day to day basis you can’t ... I can’t just go out a handbag or go on a holiday, I have to think about it. I have to save up a bit of money and then skimp for a little while.”

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Social EngagementIn all three countries, those respondents with smaller social circles were most likely to report missing the conviviality of work, and the opportunity to mix with a variety of people. As observed by Pattacchini and Engelhardt (2016), the size and density of social network tends to decline in retirement. One American, Charles (US38, age 62), described declining social contact as a key disappointment: “I have always been in a nuclear family and fairly quiet outside of work and so my social sphere was work and you lose that when you retire or at least I have - I need to address it in terms of identifying other social settings for myself… I think I enjoy being around people, so I’m not getting that kind of fulfilment being retired, because I really haven’t identified my posse yet”.

Disappointment with opportunities for social engagement was most common among the American retirees, where families were often geographically dispersed and where peers and partners were more likely to be employed. While more prevalent in discussions with the Americans, gaps in social opportunities at the local level were also raised by the Italians and English. Provision for the retired in many locales, across each of the three countries, seems weakly developed with too few affordable opportunities for social engagement and community life. As noted by one 57 year old English woman, Nadine, who had retired from a stressful accounting job, there is a particular gap in provision for those in their third age i.e. recent retirees in their late 50s and 60s: “There’s a group advertised that came up for the over fifties in March. I thought ‘okay I’ll go to that.’ But I have to say it’s probably the over seventies. Also the U3A … I had a look in one day and I went past and I could only see elderly and I thought ‘oh’ and I emailed this guy and I said ‘at my age am I too young?’ and he said ‘well you will find that you are one of a few’. So there is definitely a gap” [in provision for people in their 60s] (EN27).

After retiring, Susan, an American woman in her 60s (US13, age 65), said that she frequently found herself not sure of what she should do on a daily basis, and found it difficult to “break into new relationships.” Susan also reported being constrained for financial reasons. As of the third interview, she described herself as “being in limbo”: “I know a lot of people in [California] that are good friends but they’ve all moved on, it’s been twenty years since I lived here and they’re not waiting for me to knock on their door and say ‘oh yes let’s be friends and I’ve got all these wonderful things planned for us to do.”

Opportunities in the daytime seem to be particularly lacking. Many retirees, especially those with partners still working, noted that they were kept busy and had enough company in the evenings but felt isolated in the day with few affordable opportunities to pursue, as noted by Victoria: “I keep looking but everything is on of an evening and I want to spend that evening with my husband, you know, I don’t want it in the evening. I want it during the day. Everything tends to be evening classes.” (EN43, age 59)

Tim (EN40, age 59) similarly expresses disappointment with opportunities in the daytime in England: “I think it can be quite lonely …If you look around now there’s no one around, you know, you need to go out and I’ve realised that that you do need to go and meet people because you can wander up the streets, nobody will talk to you, everyone’s busy doing their bit of shopping. It’s only things come back to life at five o’clock when everyone starts coming back from work so it’s really quiet”.

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EnvironmentA large number of the residents of City X in the US expressed deep disappointment with the declining ‘liveability’ of their community (despite the city having received recognition and awards as Age Friendly). Over and again, interviewees commented on retiring into a community that had changed rapidly for the worse, particularly over the last 4 to 5 years – the population of City X has expanded dramatically leading to increased rents which will force US02 to move; causing terrible traffic congestion which has led to US06 going out less often; and accompanied by a surge in crime and homelessness leading to anxiety among some of the retirees. People talked of being ‘heartbroken’ at the loss of the ‘pretty little city’ they had loved for many years and looked forward to retiring in. A sense of belonging has disappeared for some, as noted by US25 “it doesn’t feel like my city anymore”.

US10, a 66 year old woman, summarises some of the widely voiced concerns around a rapidly changing community: “It’s getting really ..to me I say worse it just doesn’t have the neighbourhood feel. There are a lot of new people that have moved into the neighbourhood. Some of the houses in my surrounding area they used to be single family homes, the owners and developers have come in and put in apartments. So that’s added more people to the neighbourhood…they don’t really have anything in common with those of us who have been here quite a long time. Traffic is way heavy, it’s just crazy…within the last five years or so…the neighbourhood is not the same. The area that I live in has a Neighbourhood Association and so where it used to be mixed people on the association now they’re mainly all white...so they’re just really kind of losing out the voice of the minorities in this community”

Support during the transitionThe potential for social isolation or lack of community in retirement was highlighted by many; interest in post-retirement or transitional support groups was therefore explored. Some individuals were not attracted by this format of support with one stating “I am not a joiner”; others felt they had a strong and wide social support network or were sufficiently happy with their retired lives to see no need for support although some did acknowledge there was little support available should they need it. Nevertheless, a desire for workshops, drop in centres, networks of support and other provision was widely expressed and described succinctly by one 59 year old Italian woman who spontaneously described what would have helped her transition: “There should be something for us pensioners… they should give us a Guide for services for older or retired people. I would like something for those who are retiring, to help prepare for hobbies, or interests… orientation courses, strategies to apply just before the transition to retirement. Yes, a guide to help us to psychologically and concretely prepare for retirement”.

One perceived benefit of a post-retirement group is that it could provide an opportunity for just talking and sharing experiences, particularly when the retirement transition has presented adjustment challenges as in the following two examples:

“Pre-retirement workshops, post retirement workshop… I think, you know, the more I think about it the more valuable they are… it’s a very good idea if you get people that suddenly feel once they’ve left their employment suddenly feel isolated. Very little communication. Then a meeting of this sort would assist with that, just purely and simply let’s meet and talk and we all know that it always feels a lot easier when you ... from chatting you realise somebody else is feeling the same as you” (EN04, man, age 64)

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“Any sort of talk is useful amongst other people there so I mean my input as far as other people are concerned they might find it handy….it’s always good isn’t it. I mean even you coming to see us at the moment and having to talk through this and the rest of it, it’s a chance to unburden ourselves and sort of maybe talk about things that maybe we wouldn’t normally talk about there or broach issues or whatever” (EN15, man, age 60)

Most available support and advice tends to focus on financial resources in retirement. One respondent had attended a retirement course organised by her large public sector employer but, in a similar vein to the previous quotes, found the courses did not meet any emotional or psychological support needs: “The retirement course was more about what they had to offer plus a bit of advice about finances, you know, and pensions and things like that. But other than that there was no ... it wasn’t about sort of discussing these sorts of issues. Well what happens if you retire and you find your parents are ill how are you going to run your time and how are you going to feel about that. There was nothing about, you know, maybe learning from other people’s experience about feeling, you know, like you’re losing a role and how are you going to manage that. There wasn’t anything on that sort of, you know, the emotional side of it, there was no discussions or place within that course for that which actually is quite important I think”. (EN42, woman, age 54)

Employment OpportunitiesSeveral Italians expressed disappointment that their employer had denied them the opportunity to phase their retirement by means of a period of part-time work while others wanted to pick up some work in retirement but found no opportunities. In order to claim a pension in Italy it is first necessary to withdraw from the labour force; there is a pervasive early retirement culture; and with high youth unemployment older workers feel it is a moral duty “to step aside” to the benefit of younger generations. Cultural norms, a challenging economic environment and workplace policies combine to erect significant barriers to employment later in life.

Retirees in England and the US do not face the same cultural or structural obstacles with most believing there are opportunities to work should they so wish. Regulatory developments over recent years are supportive of phased retirement and reverse retirement in the liberal economies of US and UK (although the existence age discrimination is not refuted and is acknowledged to constrain the range of options at older ages).

Resources perspectiveConceptualising the fulfilment of and impediments to retirement adaptation, a resources perspective is helpful and integrates the various theoretical schemes outlined above. Key resources which emerged from the interviews include:

Economic – this reflects not only adequacy of income but also the availability of opportunities perceived as affordable.

Social capital, both bonding and bridging. The former relating to close family and other in-group ties, the latter relating to social contacts that connect individuals to other groups. Too much bonding social capital concentrated in the home, without bridging social capital, can lead to social isolation.

Regulatory/legal environment which can provide or block opportunities to work or volunteer later in life.

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Community – both in terms of opportunities for social engagement, a sense of belonging, and in terms of physical environment which can facilitate or impede community involvement (including rapidly changing demographic make-up, congestion, crime, ownership and use of real estate)

Psychological – including motivation, self-efficacy and resilience in the face of unwelcome change or depletion of resources.

Health

Each of these categories give rise to distinct policy/practice implications and solutions.

Discussion

The study surfaced numerous retiree subgroups with varying degrees of satisfaction in retirement. For some, retirement adaptation was associated with the adoption or extension of social roles, often family oriented, consistent with role theory. For others, satisfaction was associated with the pursuit of gratifying activities (including physical activities, travel, hobbies and a range of projects) which correspond to the adaptive trajectories proposed by activity theory. Few conformed to disengagement theory at this stage of their life (early retirement). According to Hobfoll (2002), resources provide the means by which individuals fulfil their perceived needs and, as discussed in Wang (2007), a dynamic resources perspective integrates these theories, taking account of the considerable diversity of retirement lifestyles, while emphasising the importance of individual, economic, social and environmental resources in enabling retirees to make and realise plans, pursue social roles and activities and adjust to new retired lives.

An adequate understanding of the challenges and prospects retirement brings needs theories which account for the dynamism of many retirement journeys as resources fluctuate over time. In these instances resilience and motivational resources in the face of change were important for sustained satisfaction, adjustment and re-adjustment.

The multi-dimensionality of retired life must also be acknowledged (defying binary definitions of successful ageing). Many retirees were broadly satisfied, content with their family relationships but also disappointed with opportunities for social engagement beyond the private sphere with a sense that retirement did not fully meet expectations. For others, liberation from work was deeply satisfying but troubled family relationships or inadequate economic resources undermined the realisation of retirement aspirations and plans, compromising overall satisfaction. While individuals typically described themselves as quite happy in retirement initially, when probed, reservations and disappointments emerged. The phenomenological approach provided a more nuanced understanding of the retirement experience and potential tensions between different life spheres.

The findings also indicate that an overemphasis on individual agency downplays the significance of broader factors, including social structure, local community strength, cultural expectations and wider regulatory context. Individuals shape their own lives but structural context and wider social actors can play a significant role in shaping opportunities in, and therefore adaptation to, retirement.

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For detailed findings see:

Barnes, H., Vegeris, S., Smeaton, D., Socci, M., Santini, S. and Principi, A. (2017) Wellbeing after work – finding purpose and meaning in the early years of retirement. WRW Working Paper # 7

Principi, A., Smeaton, D., Cahill, K. Santini, S., Barnes, H., and Socci, M. (2017) Trajectories of adjustment to retirement: what happens to plans for retirement, and does this affect retirement satisfaction? WRW Working Paper # 9

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Section 2: Achievements, Dissemination and Looking Ahead

Having set out the key findings from the study this section summarises the achievements and looks ahead to how the findings might be taken forward. The published papers, working papers, reports and dissemination outputs can all be downloaded from the project web page: http://workandretirement.uk/dissemination.

Peer reviewed publications from the study:

Smeaton, D and White, M. (2015) The Growing Discontents of Older British Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life. Social Policy and Society, volume 15, issue 03, pp. 369-385. http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A98emxnfgpuv8I

White, M. and Smeaton, D. (2016) Older employees’ declining attitudes over 20 years and across classes. Human Relations (First View: May 2016 1-23) http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/0018726715618765v1.pdf?ijkey=3aeMS3JNzznzWtA&keytype=finite

Smeaton, D., Barnes, H. and Vegeris, S. (2016) Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement. Journal of Aging and Health: 1-20 (available online, First View http://jah.sagepub.com/search/results?fulltext=smeaton&x=0&y=0&submit=yes&journal_set=spjah&src=selected&andorexactfulltext=and)

Principi, A., Santini, S., Socci, M., Smeaton, D., Cahill, K., Vegeris, S. Barnes, H., (2015) Retirement plans and active ageing: Perspectives in three countries. Ageing and Society FirstView August 2016, pp 1 – 27 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=10484189&jid=ASO&volumeId=-1&issueId=-1&aid=10484184&fromPage=cupadmin&pdftype=6316268&repository=authInst

Cahill, K.E., Giandrea, M. and Quinn, J.F. (2015) To What Extent is Gradual Retirement a Product of Financial Necessity? Work, Aging and Retirement, Volume 3, Issue 1, 1 January 2017, Pages 25–54. https://academic.oup.com/workar/article/3/1/25/2623812/To-What-Extent-is-Gradual-Retirement-a-Product-of?searchresult=1

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Smeaton, D and White, M (2016) Britain’s Older Employees in Decline, 1990-2006: A panel analysis of pay. Work Employment and Society. Online First p1-21. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0950017016687717Working papers

Salis, S., Smeaton, D. and Icardi, R. (2017) Health impacts of retiring: Evidence from matched data for the US, England and European countries. Submitted to: Journal of Health Economics

Haile, G. and Smeaton, D (2017) Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda? Submitted to: Human Relations

Cahill, K.E., Giandrea, M. and Quinn, J.F. (2016) Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated? Submitted to: Monthly Labor Review

Hess, M, Bauknecht, J. and Pink, S. (2017) Hours Flexibility and Timing of Retirement – Findings from Europe. Submitted to: Journal of Aging & Social Policy

Taylor, P. and McLoughlin, C. (2017) Psychological wellbeing and changing employment statuses of older people in Australia: Evidence from the HILDA survey. Submitted to: Australian Journal of Labour Economics

Barnes, H., Vegeris, S., Smeaton, D., Socci, M., Santini, S. and Principi, A. (2017) Wellbeing after work – finding purpose and meaning in the early years of retirement. Submitted to: Ageing and Society

Cahill, K., Smeaton, D. and Principi, A. (2016) Does the Option of Continued Work Later in Life Result in a More Optimistic View of Retirement?

Smeaton, D., Di Rosa, M. and Principi, A. (2017) Reverse retirement - a mixed methods study of returning to work in England, Italy and the USA: propensities, predictors and preferences. Submitted to: International Journal of Ageing and Later Life

Nekola, M., Principi, A., Svarc, M. Nekolová, M., Smeaton, D. (2017) Downward occupational mobility in later life: a process of marginalization? Submitted to: Work Aging and Retirement

Principi, A., Smeaton, D., Cahill, K. Santini, S., Barnes, H., and Socci, M. (2017) Trajectories of adjustment to retirement: what happens to plans for retirement, and does this affect retirement satisfaction?

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Submitted to: Research on Ageing

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Study Reports

Smeaton, D. (2016) Voluntary Retirement Motives: Implications for the Extending Working Lives Policy Agenda in the UK. A submission to the Cridland Review

Bauknecht, J., Naegele, G., Smeaton, D. and Taylor, P (2017) Extending Working Life – Cross Country Policy Landscape Final Report

Smeaton, D. (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – UK National Report

Kevin Cahill (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – US National Report

Philip Taylor, Catherine Earl, Christopher McLoughlin (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – Australia National Report

Markéta Nekolová, Martin Nekola (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – Czech Republic National Report

Pietro Checucci, Andrea Principi (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – Italy National Report

Jürgen Bauknecht and Gerd Naegele (2016) Extending Working Life Policy Landscape – German National Report

Disseminated Findings

Findings have been widely disseminated through workshops, seminars and conferences. Presentations can be downloaded from the project web page: http://workandretirement.uk/dissemination. They include:

1. IAGG-ER 8th Congress 23-26 April 2015 (International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics). Dublin. Symposium: “Political Answers to demographic questions in different welfare regimes – Delaying labour market exit”. 3 papers presented:

Germany`s attempt to raise the employment rates of older workers and to prolong working lives –to understand better German retirement behaviour, attitudes and policies. Presenter – Gerd Naegele

The policies for the extension of working life in Italy between lights and shadows. Presenter – Marco Socci

Extending Working Life in the UK. Presenter – Deborah Smeaton

2. Age Action Alliance meeting. February 2015

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Comparing the experience of retirement, UK, US and Italy. Presenter - Sandra Vegeris

3. Gerontological Society of America: Annual Scientific Meeting. November 2015. Symposium: Anticipating the retirement experience: a cross cultural perspective. 4 papers presented:

The retirement experience: a cross cultural perspective. Presenter: Deborah Smeaton

Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement. Presenter: Deborah Smeaton

The anticipation of retirement in Italy, UK and US: expectations and plans. Presenter: Andrea Principi

Does the option of continued work lead to a more optimistic view of retirement? Presenter: Kevin. E. Cahill

4. Gerontological Society of America: Annual Scientific Meeting. November 2015. Symposium: Muddling Through Retirement: Understanding How Households Deal With Inadequate Retirement Income

To What Extent is Gradual Retirement a Product of Financial Necessity? Presenter - K.E. Cahill; M.D. Giandrea; J. Quinn

5. Allied Social Sciences/American Economics Association (ASSA/AEA) January 2nd-3rd 2016 meetings in San Francisco

Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated? Presenter Kevin Cahill

6. Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatric Congress. Napoli, 27.11.15

Plans for the future after retirement: typologies of active ageing in Italy. Presenter: Sara Santini

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7. International Sociological Association, 3rd ISA Forum of Sociology. “The futures we want: global sociology and the struggles for a better world”, July 10-14 2016. Work, Ageing and Health session RC11 Sociology of Aging. 2 Papers:

Health and Wellbeing during the Transition to Retirement: The More the Fears the Less the Actions? Presenter: Sara Santini

Does retirement improve health outcomes of older individuals? Comparison between retiring and remaining employed. Presenter: Javiera Cartagena-Farias

8. ESA Research Network on Ageing in Europe. 2016 Mid-term Conference “Ageing in Europe: Beyond the Work Centred Life Course?” September 14-16, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Putting work in its place? Rebalancing labour market activities, leisure, family life and voluntary work after retirement. Presenter: Helen Barnes

Hours Flexibility and Retirement Age. Presenter: Jürgen Bauknecht, Moritz Hess & Sebastian Pink

9. GSA Annual Scientific Meeting, 2016, November 16-20. New Lens on Ageing: Changing Attitudes, Expanding Possibilities

Declining job satisfaction, extending working life (EWL) and the ‘new capitalism’. Presenter: Deborah Smeaton

10. International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG). 21st IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics, hosted by The Gerontological Society of America July 23-27, 2017, San Francisco

Retirement Adjustment – The Early Years: A 3 Country Qualitative Comparison. Presenter: Deborah Smeaton

11. Fuller Working Lives: Policy and analytical insights from Research Council funded projects. 30th March 2017, Church House, Westminster, London

An event jointly organised by the ESRC and Centre for Ageing Better. One aim of the event was to facilitate opportunities for grant holders to share their findings and influence thinking among the policy and practice community. The audience therefore included representatives from the Department for

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Education, Department for Work and Pensions, and the joint Work and Health Unit. In addition representatives from the Centre for Ageing Better, keen to identify ‘what works’ in relation to the fuller working lives agenda, were in attendance. A further aim of the event was to encourage academic join up and networking. Deborah Smeaton attended this event, sharing findings from several strands of our research with the full audience and through close communication with government department representatives.

12. WFRN Conference “Careers, Care, and Life-Course 'Fit': Implications for Health, Equality, and Policy”, Washington DC, 25th June 2016.

- Work restrictions experienced by family carers in Europe. Presenter: Andrea Principi

13. The Age and Employment Network seminar series. February 2018

- Work, retirement, health and wellbeing. Presenter: Sergio Salis

Abstracts for the published and working papers and for papers presented at conferences can be found in Appendix 1.

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BLOGS

Huffington Post 09/10/17:  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/../../chris-ball/working-late-or-retiring_b_18209940.html

Working Late Or Retiring Early: Which Is The Healthy Option?

The “working late train” keeps rolling as people are working longer and retiring later. The Government wants more of the same. “Extending working life is good for your health and well-being,” we are told, so we are being urged to work longer. Andy Briggs, the Government’s business champion for older workers, wants a million more people over 50 to be in work by 2022.

With this in mind, what about retirement? Let’s say your employer is downsizing and you are offered an early retirement package. Is it going to promote or harm your health, if you take it? Will you blossom in your Autumn years on the tennis court or will the reality be inactivity and early decline?

Advocates of working longer, draw on a 2006 study which suggests we are healthier working than unemployed, providing the jobs we do are ‘good jobs’ - i.e. not intrinsically unhealthy. But this hardly deals with the issue of retirement - a different kettle of fish altogether to unemployment. Is retirement really good or bad for your health, in fact?

This is one of the questions being examined by the Life Long Health and Wellbeing research programme, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Economics and Social Research Council. It is supporting research into the influences throughout our lives which may affect our health and well-being in later age. “Is retirement good for you?” is one of these.

The answer requires a more subtle approach than one might imagine and not all is as it seems. Many people know someone who died within a few months of retirement, leading friends to infer that retirement was the kiss of death.

In fact, decisions on when to retire are often linked to individuals’ states of health at the time, so the health condition which sparked the individual’s retirement could well become the later cause of his or her decline.

But still there may be valid reasons to suspect retirement is not such a good thing. When we retire, we change our habits and behaviour in various ways. These new habits can be bad for our health.

Studies have shown that retirement is linked to less physical activity, changes in dietary patterns (eating less fresh fruit and vegetables for example), more alcohol consumption and less social interaction. Once we leave the routine of working life, the habits of a lifetime may be thrown overboard. The happy hour may start earlier,

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lunch may linger and that early morning brisk walk for the train we have lost, may eliminate our day’s dose of strenuous exercise.

Being out of the labour market can decrease our sense of the structure of time. Our sense of where we are in the world, what is urgent and what we need to get on with can all be thrown awry.

Retirement can be a stressful event, impacting on our immune system, or potentially causing cardiovascular disease and generating anxiety and depression.

On the other hand, work can be stressful too. Leaving aside the conflicts or bad aspects of the working environment may be a blessed relief. There are two sides to the coin, but which is more significant? Would we, on balance, be healthier without retirement, or at least without early retirement?

Salis, Smeaton and Icardi’s work for the Life Long Health and Wellbeing research programme provides some answers . This group of researchers investigated the impact of retiring at over 50 on nearly 8,800 people across 13 Western countries (the US, England, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium and Greece). Participants were interviewed before retirement and in successive waves over a period of six or seven years.

Around 1,300 of the participants in the study retired at some point between 2004 and 2007. Their health was compared with the larger group who did not retire in the same time period, or only did so later.

The health outcomes of retirement or non-retirement were measured by self-reported health measures (whether individuals felt in “good”, “very good” or “excellent” health) as well as objective measures such as whether they had been diagnosed with one or more among a list of conditions - heart problems, stroke, cancer, lung disease, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Using a statistical technique called “co-variate analysis,” the researchers matched retired and non-retired individuals who were similar to one another in age, gender, education level, marital status, length of time in the job and a number of other indicators.

And their findings? In general terms, retirement in your fifties is bad for your health. The researchers found that retiring adversely affected the health of retirees compared with non-retirees, both in the immediate post retirement period and the longer term, six or seven years later.

Moreover this finding applies when using both ‘subjective’ measures (i.e. how they felt) and ‘objective’ measures (based on reported medical conditions). Those retired, not only felt in poorer health, they were in poorer health than those who had kept going. Two percentage points more retirees in the sample were diagnosed with chronic conditions than the non-retired.

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The differences are not enormous, but they were significant. In the shorter term (two to three years after retirement) the proportion of retirees reporting that they felt in “good,” “very good” or “excellent” health was five percentage points lower than it would have been had they not retired.

Separate analysis of the England only results, revealed that individuals from sedentary job backgrounds experience the biggest declines in health upon retirement, with the incidence of a chronic condition upon retirement increasing by an overall 10 percentage points and the negative impact being worse for men than for women. Retirement was particularly bad for mental well-being. So, for UK non-manual workers, particularly men, working longer rather than retiring earlier, seems to be the healthiest option.

The researchers comment that their findings support the idea that extending working life is beneficial to older individuals because work is a form of mental stimulation.

But, whatever people say, we have not yet reached “the age of no-retirement”. Retirement will come to most of us one day. Hence, preventative measures are needed to limit retirement’s negative effects, including workplace support for individuals who are considering it.

The isolating, negative impacts of retirement, in particular need attention. Measures could include the strengthening of local communities and social groups to support active ageing. Retirees struggling to cope with low levels of income could also benefit from financial support and advice.

While demographic change, skills shortages and the growing income replacement gap in pensions are all encouraging us to work longer, retirement is still seen by many as a hard earned end to the journey of working life. Arriving at the station, it seems, requires all the care of the engine driver avoiding slamming into the buffers.

The PSI Blog 1 June 2016http://www.psi.org.uk/site/news_article/motivation_on_the_slide_for_older_managers_and_professional_employees

Motivation on the slide for older managers and professional employees

For most organisations, experienced older managers are one of their most valuable assets, as are older professional employees – engineers, accountants, medics, economists, IT experts and others. Not surprisingly, these occupations have been and continue to be highly rewarded, relative to other kinds of employee.

But now, research from PSI shows that the motivation of these groups, once they reach late career, has been on a downward slide since the early 1990s. Indeed, they

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are the only group whose job satisfaction and organisational commitment have been falling over the entire 20-year period.

The research is bad news for government and for employers. Keeping these employees in the workforce will be difficult, re-motivating them harder still. PSI researchers Deborah Smeaton and Michael White, who carried out the research, blame widespread regimes of cost reduction and continuous organisational change as the source of growing pressures and uncertainties for executives.

The findings are published in full in the journal Human Relations – access the article here.

You can also read a recently posted summary and discussion of the article by the authors, on the ‘Work in Progress’ website of the American Sociological Association. [http://wp.me/p2Obbg-14t]

The PSI Blog 22 July 2015http://www.psi.org.uk/site/blog_index/1822

Older workers: kept in but not kept happyDeborah Smeaton and Michael White

Unless older people stay employed and paying taxes for more years, the welfare state will crumble under the pension burden. So government policy since the 1990s has been designed to keep older employees working for longer.

But new research findings show that older employees became steadily more unhappy about their jobs from the early Nineties through to 2012. Their overall job satisfaction and organisational commitment fell over this period, relative to younger employees, and older employees became particularly unhappy about increased work pressures. Over the recession period, older employees also became dissatisfied with job insecurity and declining company pensions.

These findings come as a blow to both government and employers. Unhappy employees are likely to seek escape, damaging the prospects for the ‘keep workers in’ policy. Unhappiness at work also means lower performance in the job and a waning of the ‘loyalty’ that employers value.

To extend working life (EWL), government and employers will therefore have to think more about quality of working life (QWL).

Our findings are published in the journal Social Policy and Society. More details of the paper are available here.

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The PSI Blog 30/01/17 

Is retirement a ‘window of opportunity’ for lifestyle change?

Over the past two decades, retirement has increasingly come to be presented as a ‘risk’ for individuals, whether in relation to income or due to the potentially negative impact on wellbeing, physical, and mental health. In light of warnings that retirement is a health risk, a new qualitative research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council, has explored whether English workers plan significant change to their health-related behaviours as they make the transition from employment to retirement.

The study found that many respondents saw retirement as representing an opportunity for positive health change and the introduction of healthy lifestyles, or as a beneficial side effect of retiring from challenging work circumstances. A smaller group felt retirement carried inherent health risks – for example, drinking alcohol more frequently, over-eating due to boredom, and slowing down or ‘vegetating’ – and saw a need to guard against these.

Although the structure and routines provided by paid employment are a resource for well-being (providing social contact, income, activity, and ‘meaning’), they are also a constraint, which limits the available time and emotional and physical energy to address other lifestyle areas such as exercise and healthy eating. The health implications of retirement are therefore complex and context-dependent.

Policies and interventions targeting the health related practices of people on the cusp of retirement may well be effective because this ‘moment of change’ temporarily disrupts patterns of behaviour in everyday life and opens the possibility of modifying habits before new routines become established.

The findings are published in full in the Journal of Aging and Health. Access the article here.

The PSI Blog 20/03/17

Older employees not keeping up with the young Joneses

The media keep telling us that older retired people are better off than the younger generation. While they may have toiled for years to pay off their mortgages, they did have the good fortune to get into the housing market before it went mad and bad. Today’s pensioner households are also enjoying higher incomes than working households for the first time.

But, as we note in a new paper just published by the online version of the journal Work, Employment and Society, this may be a story of bygone days. Older

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employees who are now heading into the pre-retirement zone have a different story to tell. Over a 15-year period younger employees (under-45s) consistently forged ahead in their wages and earnings compared with the over-45s. At the end of the period, the older group’s earnings had slipped back by 21 per cent compared with their younger counterparts, and for older male employees the comparative decline was larger still, at 32 per cent. A process of greater inter-generational equality, at least in terms of earnings, would appear to be underway.

So the good times will not be quite so good for the next generation of retired people.

There is also a message or two in this for younger workers. Service increments and promotion grades are being cut, not to mention company pensions. Pay is increasingly based on performance. The advice might be to push for as much as you can get while you are in your prime, and save all you can, because nobody will be making it up for you later.

Read the paper

Britain’s older employees in decline, 1990–2006: a panel analysis of pay, Work, Employment and Society, 20 March 2017

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Achievements from the award summarised

Overarching objectives of the project:

To promote understanding of health and wellbeing later in life – both in the workplace and as people make the transition to retirement, including:

o subjective and objective health implications associated with delaying retirement

o workplace policies and practices that support/impede wellbeing and satisfaction at older ages (with implications for employment duration)

o experiences of and support needs during the retirement transition

To examine later life labour markets including:o the policies that shape patterns of employment o the role of flexible working / phased retirement opportunitieso job quality and the accommodation of older workerso the extent to which delayed retirement places older workers at risk of

labour market marginalisation o reverse retirement – key determinants (including economic push

factors)

Objectives have been met with key findings summarised below, followed by an indication of their policy relevance and which stakeholders might take the findings forward.

Key findings

Key findings detailed below are clustered under the following headings:

A) Health and wellbeing implications of extended working life

B) Later life wellbeing and satisfaction in the workplace

C) Later Life Labour Markets

D) Retirement

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A) Health and wellbeing implications of extended working life

Health impact of working vs retiring. Subjective perceptions of wellbeing are compromised and the incidence of chronic health conditions increase when comparing retirees with similar workers (matched on age, baseline health, gender and other characteristics). Retirement adversely affects retirees’ health in the immediate post-retirement period and, over the longer term, a downward trend is maintained with the subjective and objective health of retirees declining further relative to those who remain in work. Subgroup analysis indicates that the same story holds for men and women and for those from physical and non-physical occupational backgrounds.

Habit discontinuity and opportunities for interventions at retirement. Depth interviews highlight that retirement is seen to present an opportunity for positive habit change for some retirees, particularly when the nature of their jobs or hours they work are seen as obstacles to more healthy practices, for example due to time constraints, lack of energy or feeling stressed (whether in relation to physical activity, healthy eating or alcohol consumption). Others see risks associated with retirement, with a fear of drinking alcohol more frequently in the absence of work commitments, over-eating due to boredom, and/or slowing down or ‘vegetating’, lapsing into a state of inactivity. Particular barriers to healthy lifestyles cited included: living alone, cold wet winter weather; no longer having sporting companions; motivation deficits; mobility difficulties; and reduced incomes alongside the cost of some preferred activities, practices and club memberships. The health implications of retirement are therefore complex and context dependent. Interviewees who were vocal that retirement carried risks were open to advice, support and interventions that may help prevent such feared outcomes.

Sedentary workers – implications of retirement. One legacy of the 20th century labour market is a growth in the volume of sedentary occupations. As more and more retirees are leaving inactive jobs, this study examines how people change their level and type of physical activity across the domains of transport, housework and leisure following a longitudinal qualitative sample of recent retirees in England, Italy and North-western United States. This was supplemented by respondents’ accounts of motivations, enablers and barriers regarding their activity levels. Feeling mentally tired and having little time left for oneself at the end of a working day are key obstacles to physical activity while still in paid employment. Retirement might therefore be expected to improve physical activity (PA). Although on average work-retirement transition trends show a drop in PA as retirees on the whole do not compensate for previous work PA (Banks et al., 2014), it can be expected that people retiring from sedentary jobs are a separate case because their PA almost exclusively occurs outside of work time. A key finding from the analysis of change over the retirement transition is that PA is a lifelong habit and people don’t make dramatic changes after leaving sedentary type work. Nevertheless, on the whole, self-reported PA increased during the transition to retirement across household, transport and leisure-time domains. Changes were observed in the variety, intensity and duration of home maintenance as retirees tackled long neglected cleaning and clearing, painting and decorating, and garden tasks. Men in particular took on

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building projects around the home and sometimes for family and friends. Continuity in the type of leisure-time PA was a common theme. Those with a history of certain sports and leisure-time PA tended to maintain or increase the duration or intensity of these activities when retired. Change in variety was found in the transport domain as respondents consciously eschewed the car for walking and cycling as a means to increase their fitness. Moreover, some respondents added to their fitness levels through physically active volunteer opportunities such as gardening. Conditions that seemed to influence positive changes and maintain PA levels were:

o Medical advice to increase fitness levelso Fitness combined with social opportunities (especially for women)o Commitment to fitness fees or a fitness buddyo Dog walkingo Devices and Apps that provide physical monitoring data

Factors described as presenting obstacles to preferred levels or types of PA:o Health and mobility problemso Caring responsibilitieso A lack of companions with whom to engage in PA (whether sporting activities

or simply going for a walk)o Costs of club membershipo Cold wet winter weather o Poor motivation levels

For the growing numbers of sedentary workers who already rely on activities outside work to maintain their physical wellbeing, this study found that retirement can increase opportunities for physical fitness. The establishment of good PA habits should therefore begin prior to retirement.

Early voluntary retirement – health motivations. Health was a particularly prominent concern among older workers in discussions of early voluntary retirement motivations. In relation to early retirement, there is a sense that time is running out and there are more important things than money. Many wish to enjoy their retirement while still relatively young and in good health and see continued working as a risk to their physical health and wellbeing (with stressful, sedentary and more strenuous jobs each carrying different risks). Many spoke of feeling worn out and tired. Given the degree of health pessimism (despite evidence that working can preserve health) there is still a long way to go for policymakers to reverse the entrenched preference for early retirement which will increasingly become the preserve of more socio-economically advantaged individuals as defined benefit pension schemes disappear and the state pension age is pushed back.

Early retirement culture – health pessimism. In relation to increases in SPa to 68, most interviewees felt that the system was not flexible enough and that having a single pensionable age was unrealistic, failing to acknowledge the accumulated impact of different occupational backgrounds. Some respondents raised concerns about the difficulty of coping in jobs in their late 60s given their experience of slowing mental responses and feeling more tired. Earlier retirement was seen as vital to prevent the onset or deterioration of health. One major and common objection to later pensionable ages was the possibility of not surviving long enough to reach SPA or

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not surviving long thereafter. Not only were people concerned that they would not get the opportunity to enjoy a sufficiently long retirement, but they were particularly aggrieved at the prospect of having paid into a system all their lives they may not receive fair returns.

Opportunities to work in retirement welcomed. Optimism about retirement is related to the optionality of work in the years ahead, but not if continued work is a financial necessity. The study explored the relationship between the optionality of work in retirement and individuals’ overall outlook about their retirement years. We hypothesized that individual who viewed work in retirement as an option would also have a more favorable outlook for their retirement years. Such opportunities can allay fears relating to future financial circumstances, maintain social relationships and permit a return to work should retirement not live up to expectations. We find that there is indeed a relationship between the optionality of continued work later in life and retirement satisfaction and overall well-being, but that the relationship only holds among those for whom work truly is an option, as opposed to a financial necessity.

B) Later life wellbeing and satisfaction in the workplace

Job satisfaction declining – job quality and working conditions implicated. The ageing workforce policy debate is rightly focussed on providing opportunities for older people to continue working should they so wish. However, the prevalence of heteronomy, alienation, and more pressurised working environments associated with the ‘new capitalism’, should not be underestimated as key barriers to work motivation later in life. Studies have repeatedly shown that older workers are generally more committed to their organisations and have higher job satisfaction than younger workers. This satisfaction/ commitment premium, however, has been slipping since the early 90s. Increasing demands, more intensified working environments and other changes in the workplace amount to significant shifts in the terms and conditions of jobs, accompanied by a sense of contract violation, deteriorating job satisfaction and organisational commitment. While ‘continuous change’ has been a characteristic of workplaces for many years now, the pressure to continue on a path of improved efficiency is unlikely to have run out of steam, and will remain a feature of public and private sector working practices given current concerns with low productivity and weak growth in the UK. While the government has instituted a fairly comprehensive range of policies to promote EWL, job quality remains an obstacle to further progress.

Erosion of age related wage and earnings differentials and emergence of work organisation based on principles of synchronous equality. A paradigm shift in Britain’s structure of incentives is underway. Older workers have been losing their privileged status as age related earnings differentials are eroded. Older employees’ earnings declined over the period 1991-2006 compared with younger employees – with an overall fall in relative earnings of 21 per cent. These developments suggest that a process of greater inter-generational equality, at least in terms of earnings, is in progress alongside the emergence of management practices dominated by

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principles of synchronous equality. The findings have broad implications for employment relationships and service contracts in the UK and raise the prospect of increased labour commodification; they also raise questions in relation to potential impacts on firm performance that arises from change in structures of incentive. The erosion of age related wage and earnings differentials points to a weakening if not abandonment of the deferred compensation paradigm, less employer tolerance for poorly aligned performance and rewards, and therefore fewer ‘safe havens’ in late career - older workers are likely to be enduring more pressured working environments as a consequence with implications for wellbeing. Tensions between equality and fairness arise alongside questions of dignity at work; systematic performance management and staff appraisal have become more widespread and, as conceptualized by Beck and Williams (2015: 271), “synchronous equality based on continual comparison has replaced an a-synchronous, or processional approach in which younger people eventually benefit from a provision which favours older employees…a considerable departure from how age groups have been managed to date”. Achieving equality of pay, treatment or performance criteria may therefore be at the expense of protecting older workers.

Older workers exhibit resilience if processes of adaptation are supported. High Performance Work Practices, designed to enhance workforce productivity and performance, are found to be largely compatible with the extended working life agenda; a deficit perspective of ageing workers is refuted. Findings do, however, highlight the need for ‘a-synchronous equality’ management frameworks that facilitate individual adaptations within the workplace as needs, priorities and abilities evolve over the working lifetime.

C) Later Life Labour Markets

Job Mobility. To promote longer working lives it is recognised that people may need to change their jobs and retrain more often to keep pace with technological change and shifting needs and abilities associated with ageing. However, job mobility rates differ across the developed world, with higher rates evident in ‘liberal’ welfare regimes, while elsewhere low job mobility continues to characterise later life labour markets (LLLMs). Identifying optimal levels of mobility is a considerable challenge – overly high levels incur excessive transaction costs and wasted/ underinvestment in training while very low mobility may dampen economy wide innovation and undermine efficient allocation of resources to match the ebb and flow of industrial restructuring within a global economic context. Too much or too little mobility therefore has implications for productivity and economic growth. Not only is national economic performance at stake but so too are the employment prospects of different groups of workers. Strict employment protection legislation and low mobility may benefit ‘insiders’ i.e. well qualified individuals in good health who are in decent protected jobs but can disadvantage non-core ‘outsider’ groups such as: older workers who might be positioned at the bottom of ‘job queues’ (Reskin and Roos, 1990). With competing national costs and benefits and uneven impacts across the labour force, difficult trade off decisions need to be taken. Mobility patterns in the liberal economies of USA, UK and Australia are compared with an Eastern European

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country (Czech Republic), a continental European economy (Germany) and a Mediterranean country (Italy). The latter three countries were characterised by low mobility in the 90s (Hofacker, 2010; Blossfeld et al, 2006) but since that time widespread reforms aimed at extending working lives have been implemented, most notably: increased SPa, closure of early retirement disability benefit routes and unemployment activation measures. As a result, the European countries have exhibited strong increases in employment participation rates among older men and women. However, despite converging policy landscapes and convergence in participation rates, in comparison with the liberal economies, there has been no convergence in mobility propensities. The European countries are still characterised by low mobility after the age of 50. Welfare retrenchment and raised pension ages have largely been unaccompanied by other labour market changes that might impact upon capacity to change jobs such as employment protection legislation, lifelong learning and employer recruitment propensities.

Marginalisation. In the higher mobility countries disquiet has been voiced in relation to the potential ‘McDonaldisation’ of old age (Macnicol, 2008; Roberts, 2006; Standing, 2011; Lain, 2012) - of concern is the extent to which older workers in searching for jobs that better meet their needs and circumstances are channelled into a more narrow range of occupations characterised by lower status, pay, skill and safety. In both the EU and England two thirds of job changers maintain their occupational status, of the remainder, downward mobility is more common than promotion with a full one fifth experiencing a fall in the status and skill level of their job. Implications arise for material wellbeing and ability to save for the future and may also have implications for competition between younger and older workers who may vie for the same unskilled jobs.

Marginalisation trade-offs. It is plausible that individuals have chosen to downshift later in life in order to have a more relaxed and phased transition toward retirement. Downward mobility may therefore be associated with enhanced satisfaction, reduced work pressure and a reduction in physical strain. Under these circumstances the label ‘marginalised’, which carries negative connotations, might be less appropriate than more neutral terminology such as ‘bridge jobs’ used widely in American labour market literature. Downward mobility may be associated with a calculated trade-off between lower status and pay against higher satisfaction and less physical or mental strain. Study findings indicate some offsetting benefits. A process of marginalisation is apparent for a large minority of job changers. While this downward mobility at older ages is not offset in our countries of study by gains in psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction or reductions in the incidence of physically demanding roles, reduced job strain is evident however, likely reflecting the significance of work stress as a key trigger for job change.

Phased Retirement. Phased retirement programs and part-time working opportunities later in life may be popular but they reduce the intensive margin (working hours per week) without raising the extensive margin (working years). What is good for the individual may therefore not be good for the economy. The study investigated the impact of phased retirement across Europe and England finding a negative influence on retirement age. The decrease is stronger in Central and

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Eastern Europe than in liberal and Scandinavian countries. We conclude that part-time working at the end of a career reduces labor supply. Further qualitative research is warranted to better understand these counter-intuitive trends.

D) Retirement

Reverse retirement. Using methodological triangulation to compare reverse retirement in USA, England and Italy reveals considerable diversity of practice and orientation. Over two yearly periods around 10% of American retirees return to work compared with 6% in England. In Italy retirement is more of a one way street. Reverse retirement is associated in the liberal economies of the USA and England with financial factors including retirement income, having more children, children under 30 and mortgage debts. In the American context, the highest earners were least likely to reverse retire while middle income groups exhibited the highest propensity to return to work and depth interviews revealed that a strong financial anxiety often underscores decisions to return to work even among the more affluent. Financial need may be a push factor but a certain degree of advantage is a pre-requisite in terms of education level, good health, being of younger age and free from caring responsibilities. Opportunity structures and capacity to work are therefore critical and represent a site of inequality later in life.

The qualitative strand of evidence indicated that dissatisfaction with retirement was a further motivation for working, and one of the main sources of discontentment was the view that there were too few opportunities for social engagement and a lack of community that might facilitate casual or more regular social contact. The depth interviews also highlighted distinct orientations toward retirement in the three countries – in Italy a family orientation was dominant alongside a perception that retirement was a time to wind down. For Americans a work orientation dominated narrative accounts of retirement which was often described as a time to take on new challenges rather than live a life of leisure. The English fell between these two extremes, were most oriented toward personal leisure but open to working on an occasional/ intermittent basis as part of a patchwork of activities embracing multiple spheres of life. Among the work oriented a desire for considerable flexibility was evident. Where the prime attraction of retirement is time sovereignty and the ability to be spontaneous, reduced hours do not provide the degree of flexibility desired as part-time jobs still require a regular commitment. Zero hours contracts would meet the flexibility needs of these retirees. Although widely criticised as depriving people of employment rights, security and financial stability, these are not the job characteristics which older workers are necessarily searching for. The English differed somewhat from the Americans by seeing themselves primarily as retired but would appreciate and benefit from opportunities to work sporadically. A more accurate description of the phenomenon in England might therefore be ‘working in retirement’ rather than ‘reverse’ or ‘unretirement’. The Americans were less likely to describe themselves as retired on re-entering the labour market looking for new challenges.

Despite international policy convergence around the extended working life agenda, the meaning of retirement, lifestyle orientations, and the role of work in retirement were still

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found to be quite distinct in Italy, USA and England. A one size fits all policy agenda, such as the normative goals of ‘active’ or ‘productive’ ageing may be a useful antidote to traditional conceptualisations of retirement as a time of disengagement and decline but risks an overly homogenised and prescriptive expectation of later life.

Active ageing (AA) paradigm – scope to improve AA normative expectations to better reflect retirement experiences and aspirations. The normative ‘Active Ageing’ (AA) concept now informs strategic policy in relation to older people across Europe. Comparing retirees in England, Italy and USA the study demonstrated that, although some dominant themes differed within each country (e.g. more work-oriented plans from US respondents, more care-related plans from Italian respondents and a leisure orientation among the English), retirement plans of the interviewees were largely consistent with the active ageing policy agenda. The study also revealed retirement expectations with an individual leisure focus. In essence, although it is important to measure the untapped potential of older people for active ageing from a productivist perspective, to ensure that latent demand for such opportunities are met, this study suggests the importance of also measuring other dimensions of retirement which have implications for the quality of life and wellbeing of older people. Findings pointed to the need for the AA paradigm to take greater account of individual wellbeing, by including indicators of leisure activities which were a prevalent retirement goal and by considering the re-weighting of employment and informal care dimensions as these ‘productive’ activities often reflected constrained choice and compromised satisfaction. One further potential weakness of the active ageing paradigm is that it may implicitly encourage older people to hold on, for as long as possible, to priorities and productive lifestyles characteristic of earlier life-stages. The risk is that this approach fails to recognise that quality of life and wellbeing of older people may also depend on a shift in pace, rhythms and focus.

Supporting the retirement transition. Policies should not only address employment opportunities and flexibilities later in life but should also focus on a broad range of support for those in retirement given that provision for the retired in many locales, across the study countries of focus - England, NW USA and Italy - seems weakly developed. While successful adaptation and contentment with new lifestyles and levels of social integration was widespread, many retirees were less satisfied, highlighting too few opportunities for social engagement and community life and a lack of basic information advice and guidance that might smooth what is potentially one of the most challenging life transitions individuals make. A desire for workshops, drop in centres, networks of support and other provision was widely expressed and described succinctly by one 59 year old Italian woman who spontaneously described what would have helped her transition: “There should be something for us pensioners… they should give us a Guide for services for older or retired people. I would like something for those who are retiring, to help prepare for hobbies, or interests… orientation courses, strategies to apply just before the transition to retirement. Yes, a guide to help us to psychologically and concretely prepare for retirement”.

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Policy and Practice Implications – Taking the Findings Forward

As populations across the developed world are ageing, core social institutions such as schools and colleges, workplaces and hospitals lag behind, ill designed to serve the population age profiles which are now emerging. Study findings have a range of policy and practice implications which a variety of stakeholders could take forward. Stakeholders in the workplace include employers, Trade Unions and organisations such as ACAS and CIPD with an interest in the health, wellbeing and satisfaction of employees. In relation to retirement transitions and outcomes, stakeholders include employers, local government and third sector organisations, including bodies such as the Big Lottery and Centre for Ageing Better. Key Government departments are also critical, influencing the policy context in which people work and retire, in particular: the Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Communities and Local Government; and the Department of Health.

Policy and practice implications of the findings are clustered under the following key sites:

Labour market/ government policy The workplace/employers Local communities/third sector and local government Colleges/universities

Labour Market Policy

Part-time working (I): Opportunities to reduce hours and work part-time have been promoted (and supported through legislation) partly in order to extend working life. Evidence suggests, however, that reduced hours opportunities are not a panacea and do not extend working lives in the aggregate. It is important, therefore, that other aspects of work and job quality are targeted to ensure working terms and conditions remain attractive later in life.

Part-time working (II): While on average part-time employment may not extend working life, more widespread availability of flexible working may, however, undermine processes of marginalisation. Reduced hours or more flexible working arrangements are less widespread in male dominated occupations/industries and in many higher status jobs. In searching for flexibility later in life older workers may experience downward occupational mobility leading to underemployment in terms of skills – a loss to employers and national economic performance.

Flexible Contracts: For those retiring to achieve greater freedom and time sovereignty, part-time opportunities may not be attractive as they are still seen as an unwelcome commitment of time. Interest in working later in life and indeed while retired is nevertheless widespread but zero hours type contracts would better meet the needs and preferences of many at this stage of life although there have been calls for an outright ban on zero hour contracts. Flexible contracts are widely used in the NHS in the form of bank staff working.

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The Workplace

Job Quality: With a secular decline in older workers’ job satisfaction and organisational commitment, employers need to consider how to motivate staff later in life. Increasing demands, more intensified working environments and other aspects of job quality are associated with health related and voluntary early retirement decisions. Employers seeking to meet the challenges of ageing workforces, staff shortages and key skills gaps must therefore attend more closely to job quality issues in order to promote staff retention.

Equality Frameworks: In contrast to deficit perspectives, which highlight older worker decline and diminished capacities, human development lifespan theories such as Selection, Optimization, and Compensation and Socioemotional Selectivity theory emphasise resilience. Policies and practices that enable workers to adapt over time include staff engagement and involvement opportunities, autonomy and control. By contrast, an emphasis on growth and continual development may run counter to older workers’ goals and priorities, thereby undermining processes of adaptation. Employers therefore need to explicitly consider the principles of equality deployed in the workplace and to recognise that synchronous equality (i.e. ensuring continual comparison and identical performance assessment criteria regardless of age) may block processes of adaptation, compromise job sustainability and undermine employee wellbeing / satisfaction. An a-synchronous framework of support may be more responsive to the changing needs, priorities and abilities of employees across their working lives.

Recruitment: Recruitment obstacles continue to represent a significant challenge for older workers. While liberal economies exhibit higher rates of mobility among the 50+ the significant increase in employment participation over the past 10 years has primarily been a retention phenomenon (with employees remaining in their long term jobs for longer rather than increasingly changing jobs later in life) and where older workers do find or change jobs, a large minority are effectively marginalised into lower status and lower paid roles. Downward mobility at older ages is not offset in our countries of study by gains in psychological wellbeing or job satisfaction; nor is there evidence of a reduction in the incidence of physically demanding roles although reduced job strain is evident. Taking these findings forward, there would appear to be a pressing need for more employers to recruit older workers into a wider range of occupations and industries. EWL measures have focussed primarily on the supply side - by means of welfare retrenchment, employment activation and delayed SPa, bolstered by abolition of the default retirement age and age discrimination legislation which protect employed older workers. The question therefore remains: what more can governments and employers do to promote the recruitment side of the equation to encourage more opportunities to gain or change jobs later in life without risking precarious later lives?

Keep-in-touch Schemes. Employers also have a role to play in helping employees in their transition to retirement. Many on the cusp of retirement express anxieties and feel ill-prepared - more support could be offered to in relation to making plans and providing opportunities to maintain access to social or sporting facilities. Keep-in-touch schemes with retired workers, for example, could help retirees to preserve

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contact with old friends and colleagues, while at the same time providing employers with a link to experienced ex-employees who may in the future be interested in work on a casual or consultancy basis, or to provide temporary cover in response to staff absence.

Local Communities

• Supporting the Retirement Transition. More support is needed to help people in the transition to retirement both at the preparation and planning stage and in the early years as people seek to adjust to their new circumstances:

– Broader Retirement Courses. In advance of retirement, courses and advice typically focus on financial planning with little available to help people prepare and adjust emotionally and psychologically. There is a need for more information advice and guidance to help retirees during the life transition. One study respondent had attended a retirement course organised by her large public sector employer but, in common with others, found the focus of the event too narrow: “the retirement course was more about what they had to offer plus a bit of advice about finances, you know, and pensions and things like that. But other than that there was no, well what happens if you retire and you find your parents are ill, how are you going to run your time and how are you going to feel about that. There was nothing about, you know, maybe learning from other people’s experience about feeling, you know, like you’re losing a role and how are you going to manage that. There wasn’t anything on that sort of emotional side of it, there was no discussions or place within that course for that which actually is quite important I think”.

– Local Authority Health and Wellbeing Responsibilities. For retirees who encounter too few opportunities for social engagement and community life once retired, more could be done. In the UK Local authorities have designated responsibility for health and wellbeing, and therefore have a key role to play in providing good-quality sport and leisure facilities and ensuring that these are affordable and accessible. Austerity led cuts to local services, however, present a challenge to adequate provision.

– Retirement Welcome Wagon. Retirement welcome programmes, along the lines of the Welcome Wagon concept could also be introduced. The Welcome Wagon programme (which operates in Canada and USA) targets new residents who are contacted soon after they move and provided with information about local products, services, and retailers. This could be adapted for the newly retired to provide information about healthy lifestyle options, recreation facilities, local social events and activities, sports clubs, and other opportunities such as volunteering etc. Incentives might be offered, such as free trial periods and social benefits, such as meeting other people, emphasised. A parallel model might be Local Authority funded ante natal classes for pregnant women – these are designed to provide important health information and birthing skills but also, as a local community scheme, to introduce expectant mothers to each other who then often function as a longer term social support group once their babies are born and lifelong friendships can be formed. ‘Introduction to Retirement’ sessions might be similarly effective and of interest to some.

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– Third Age Gaps. There are many schemes promoting healthy lifestyles and social integration around the country (although geographically uneven) but there is a key gap for the 50-65 age group and new retirees. Provision is currently more oriented toward the 4th Age and more support to grow self-help groups may be beneficial. In relation to social and physical activity one study participant noted, in relation to recent holiday in Iceland “things were set up so that older people could easily exercise outside of big apartment buildings, there was public accesses to equipment and they were almost always doing that and there were a lot of social things for exercise. You’d go to the parks and there would be a group of older people marching through the parks doing dancing and drumming and things like that and I don’t think we have that in our society at all especially not for older people. I think they need to find ways to make exercising much more social for older people many of whom don’t want to go into an athletic club with a bunch of people that are really buff and wearing tight little clothes”.

– Employer led Social Clubs. For bridging the transition between work and retirement, there are employer-organised retirement clubs and activities to encourage social connectedness and physical wellbeing, and this is a model which more employers could be encouraged to follow.

– Nurturing Civil Society. In relation to processes of urban development and land ownership, local and central government needs to more carefully consider the needs of older members of society and how to design age friendly cities. Publicly available impact assessments are needed to transparently weigh competing interests and assess the effects of local gentrification, housing markets and movements of global capital on different sectors within local communities. International investments in communities can amount to ‘hostile takeovers’. Communities need to actively engage in debates around how to transform modern public spaces to meet the needs of all social groups and promote a sense of belonging. Civil society (i.e. the activities and organisations that occupy the space between individuals, the state and businesses) needs to be nurtured. It includes voluntary groups and organisations but also, more generally, ‘associational life that brings people together’ with an emphasis on shared space, place, relationships and collective activity whether attending church, sports clubs, social groups or volunteering. As noted by Hunter and Longlands (2016:3) “civil society does not happen in a vacuum, it takes place in parks and backyards, libraries, in community centres, on the street [and] depends upon its ability to find and secure both space and time for its activities to take place.” A sense of community will therefore be directly impacted by wider structural trends including changes in the availability of physical space and the ‘hollowing out’ of communities and shifts in their composition - both private and public sector services such as pubs, libraries and local post offices, which have traditionally acted as social hubs providing opportunities for informal social contact, have been closing down and facing funding cuts. Trends in the character and make-up of local highstreets are also relevant. Once vibrant and diverse social hubs, high streets are in decline with shopping moving out of town or online leaving behind charity shops, betting shops and chain stores devoid of character. Local libraries in particular could be reinvigorated to strengthen their role as community hubs by providing free WiFi access; ‘retail-standard’ environments; and provision of additional services and facilities such as coffee, classes, sofas and toilets.

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Healthy Lifestyle Interventions. In relation to healthy lifestyles, policies and interventions targeting people on the cusp of retirement for health interventions may be particularly effective because this life transition involves other behavioural changes associated with shifts in social networks, income, and time sovereignty. Such “moments of change” temporarily disrupt patterns of behaviour in everyday life and open the possibility of modifying habits before new routines become established. As such, it represents a key point in time when individuals may be more receptive to interventions. Our findings suggest that retirement may indeed present a window of opportunity for positive habit change as many study participants saw retirement as an opportunity for change, supporting habit discontinuity theory, whether due to the expectation of more time to take care of oneself or as a solution for poor health behaviours associated with their working lifestyle. Government’s Active Ageing and Healthy Ageing campaigns (DH, 2010) and measures to improve health among younger older people (EuroHealthNet, 2012) can build on this momentum.

Colleges and Universities

Lifelong Learning. Of particular concern is that despite widespread lip service paid to the importance of lifelong learning, in practice this is a notable policy weakness. Significantly more needs to be done to enable individuals to consider their careers over a longer time span with institutionalised support to change career, retrain and learn new skills confident in future employment opportunities. Affordability is key. Government investment in adult learning has continued to fall over the past 5-10 years and with dramatic increases in the cost of HE, there are far fewer older and part-time university entrants given the financial risk.

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Appendix 1: Paper Abstracts

Smeaton, D and White, M. (2015) The Growing Discontents of Older British Employees: Extended Working Life at Risk from Quality of Working Life. Social Policy & Society: p1-17. Cambridge University Press (available online, First View) A key component of sustainable welfare policy is the extension of working life (EWL).Currently this aim is chiefly pursued by financial policies, neglecting the potential role of quality of working life (QWL) in attracting people to remain employed. National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate deteriorating overall job attitude among older employees, following the changed competitive and technological conditions of the 1990s. The investigation goes on to diagnose aspects of the work situation implicated in adverse experience of work among older employees. Work demands and the nature of work emerge as key areas of discontent, with additional evidence of insecurity, and dissatisfaction with pensions, emerging over the recent recession. Policies potentially addressing QWL, with particular attention to the role of employers, are reviewed in the conclusion.

Keywords: Older employees, quality of working life, attitudes, work demands.

Smeaton, D., Barnes, H. and Vegeris, S. (2016) Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirement. Journal of Aging and Health: 1-20 (available online, First View)

Objective: Improving health behaviours can delay or prevent lifestyle diseases. Previous quantitative studies suggest that interventions at retirement may be particularly effective. This study introduces the voices of older people to explore the potential of retirement as a change point.Method: This qualitative study of current and anticipated health behavioursamong 55 people approaching retirement in England reports thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews. Results: Many respondents expected improved health behaviors whether from conscious changes or simply as a beneficial side effect of retiring, while a smaller group felt retirement carried inherent health risks, with a need to guard against these. Discussion: The retirement transition can potentially establish positive health behaviours, but interventions need careful targeting to maximize their benefit. Further research is required to explore how far intentions translate into practiceand the barriers and facilitators to doing so.

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White, M. and Smeaton, D. (2016) Older employees’ declining attitudes over 20 years and across classes. Human Relations (available online, First View, forthcoming)

British employers, under increasing competitive pressures, and applying newtechnology and work organization, have sought to reduce labour costs, resulting inwork intensification and precarity. Older employees as a result are exposed to workdemands that conflict with expectations of favourable treatment in late career. National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2001, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate a decline in overall job attitude among older employees following the changed conditions of the 1990s and across the major recession that began in 2008. To assess whether this decline is unequally distributed, decomposition by socio-economic class is carried out. This shows that older employees in the ‘service class’ of managerial and professional employees are affected at least as much as older employees in intermediate and less skilled classes, thus underlining the age effect and showing that ‘service-class’ employees are not invulnerable to a changing economic environment.

Keywords: class, globalization, job/employee attitudes, older employees, job quality

Cahill et al (2015) Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated?

Considerable prior research has shown that the majority of older Americans with career employment do not exit the labour force directly from that career job. Rather, most move first to another job late in life, before complete labour force withdrawal. These intermediate jobs have been labelled “bridge jobs” because they are assumed to be a bridge to complete retirement. One criticism of this research is that bridge job activity may be overstated because the definition of a bridge job in the existing literature does not require a change in occupation. For some, the “bridge job” may just be another in a series of job changes, and not a prelude to retirement. Thispaper investigates the extent to which bridge jobs involve a change in occupation or a switch to part-time status, both of which may signal the start of a retirement transition, as opposed to continued career employment, albeit with a different employer. We utilize the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans that began in 1992. Among HRS respondents who were on a full-time career job at the time of the first interview and who changed jobs in subsequent waves, 48 percent of the men and 39 percentof the women also changed the (2-digit) occupation at the time of their first transition. Further, when hours worked are also considered, about three quarters of men and women experienced a change in occupation and/or a switch from full-time to part-time status. When all transitions after the career job are included, 8 out of 10 men and women either changed occupations, reduced hours to part time, or both. Finally, an examination of those career workers who changed jobs within the same occupation and who continued to work full time reveals that they more resemblethose who took bridge jobs than those who remained on their full-time career job. We conclude that the vast majority of career workers who changed jobs later in life did in fact do so as part of a retirement transition. Ignoring these subtleties does result in an overestimate of bridge job activity, but only a modest one.

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Principi, Smeaton et al (2016): Retirement plans and active ageing: perspectives in three countries

This study explores whether the plans of older workers on the cusp of retirement are in line with the active ageing (AA) agenda set by policy makers in Europe. The study was carried out in Italy, England, and the United States (US), thus extending the AA concept to the American context. A total of 133 older workers who planned to retire within the next 10-12 months were interviewed (55 in England, 40 in Italy and 38 in the US) between May 2014 and early 2015 using common semi-structured questions. Active Ageing Index (AAI) dimensions were used to gauge the orientation of older people toward their retirement. The results of the study suggest that, with some differences (for instance, more work-oriented plans from American respondents and more care-related plans from Italians), retirement plans of interviewees were substantially consistent with the active ageing perspective. However, some challenges were highlighted, including the need for governments to do more to promote genuine freedom of choice in relation to leaving the labour market, and to provide greater support for informal family carers. Findings also pointed to the need for the AA paradigm to take greater account of individual wellbeing, by including indicators of leisure activities and by considering the re-weighting of employment and informal care dimensions. Companies could also provide more support during the retirement transition: with opportunities for maintained social connection with former colleagues; and help in making and fulfilling retirement plans.

Keywords: retirement transition, active ageing, older workers, retirement plans, retirement expectations, welfare state

Smeaton and Haile (2016) Are High Performance Work Practices compatible with the Extended Working Life agenda?

This article examines the compatibility of two UK policy priorities - extending working life (EWL) and the promotion of national economic performance through high performance work practices (HPWP). While many studies have examined the link between HPWP and a range of individual-level outcomes, less widely researched is whether responses vary by age. The article contributes to the literature by examining whether the link between HPWP and wellbeing outcomes are moderated by age using data from the Workplace Employee Relations Surveys 2004 and 2011 to jointly model three different wellbeing outcomes. Results indicate that some dimensions of HPWP (organisational involvement and high performance human resource strategies) are related to a heightened incidence of job strain and diminished job satisfaction. However, older workers are not found to be more vulnerable than younger workers.

Key words: HPWP; linked employer-employee data; older workers; wellbeing.

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Cahill, Smeaton and Principi (2016) Does the Option of Continued Work Later in Life Result in a More Optimistic View of Retirement?

In America the majority of older workers exit the labor force gradually, in stages, by reducing hours in career employment, moving to a bridge job, or reentering the labor force. At the same time, older Americans’ views about retirement are generally positive. This paper explores the link between work options and individuals’ views about retirement and overall well-being. Data for this paper come from 133 original qualitative interviews of older individuals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy that were conducted in 2014 and from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a large ongoing nationally-representative longitudinal survey of older Americans. Results from the qualitative interviews reveal that respondents in the US, relative to those in the UK and Italy, reported both a higher frequency of expecting to work in retirement and a more positive outlook for their retirement years. When stratified by work expectations, however, respondents who planned to work in retirement did not have higher self-efficacy or well-being scores. An examination of interview transcripts suggested a bifurcation among those who planned to work in retirement, between: 1) those who viewed work as a contingency plan, for whom the outlook was generally positive; and 2) those who viewed work as a necessity for financial reasons, for whom the outlook was generally negative. This explanation was partly supported using data from the HRS. In both a descriptive and multivariate context, career wage-and-salary male respondents who reported some chance of working past age 65 had better retirement experiences and better mental health outcomes compared with those who expected to work past age 65 with certainty, while among women differences were not statistically significant. The findings from this paper suggest that optimism about retirement is related to the optionality of work in the years ahead, in part because work can serve as a contingency plan if financial resources are insufficient or if leisure time is not fulfilling. This finding could be of assistance to policymakers who are interested in the potential positive impacts of promoting continued work later in life.

Key words: Economics of Aging, Partial Retirement, Gradual RetirementJEL No.: J26, J14, J32, H55

Smeaton, D (2016) Voluntary Retirement Motives: Implications for the Extending Working Lives Policy Agenda in the UK

Broad ranging legislative developments in the UK since the turn of the century, designed to promote extended working lives (EWL), amount to a new regulatory framework within which decisions to work or retire are made. Yet, by 2014, less than 50 per cent of older workers were still in employment in the year before their state pension age (SPA). This qualitative study seeks to flesh out evidence from survey data by examining, in-depth, motivations to stop working and attitudes toward an SPA of 68, among 55 employees aged 55-69 who retired voluntarily in 2015. Insights from these retirees shed light on what more can be done to facilitate EWL and the extent to which such a goal is consistent with preferences. General fatigue and expectations of diminished health were a central backdrop against which decisions were taken. An early retirement culture was evident with ‘pull factors‘ dominating motivational accounts and negative views widely expressed in relation to increasing

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SPA. Tensions between the EWL agenda and ongoing changes to working conditions associated with the ‘new capitalism‘ and public sector organisational upheaval were found; as was the need for a more flexible SPA and greater mobility in older worker labour markets.

Keywords: retirement motives, voluntary retirement, older workers, new capitalism, extending working life, state pension age, early retirement culture

The relationship between late career employment transitions and physical and mental well-being (Phil Taylor and Chris McLoughlin)

With growing interest in bridge employment and flexible retirement as mechanisms for prolonging working lives, questions are being advanced regarding the outcomes these arrangements have for older workers. Widening late career employment options has been promoted as a means of encouraging older workers’ continued labour market participation, while offering tractability for those experiencing demands from multiple roles, for example, as carers, or those wishing to reduce their labour market attachment incrementally. Alternative employment arrangements such as these can, however, take a variety of forms and may be experienced differently by older workers. While the relationship between health and changes to working arrangements among older workers has been investigated from a number of different standpoints, assessing changes in physical and psychological well-being preceded by transitions to alternative employment arrangements remains an underexplored area. Making use of panel data collected in 13 consecutive waves of The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA), this study assessed the association between a range of employment transitions and subsequent physical and psychological well-being, as measured by internationally recognised scales: the SF36 and the Kessler 10, for more than 3000 respondents aged 50 and over.

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Appendix 2: Presentation Abstracts

IAGG-ER 8th Congress, Dublin 2015, 23-26 April.Symposium: Political answers to demographic questions in different welfare regimes: Delaying labour market exit"

Deborah Smeaton: Policy developments in the UK to raise older workers´ labour force participation - a multi-stranded approach

Conference presentation which generated significant interest in the study, questions and discussion from an international audience

In the UK, alongside an ageing workforce, trends in employment have raised cause for concern with a dramatic decline in the labour market participation of men during the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, rates of employment have begun to increase again, nevertheless, over half of men and women have already stopped working before they reach State Pension age (SPa). These demographic and labour market trends have led to concerns about public finances; poverty during old age; and loss of skills to the economy. Extending working life and promoting employment sustainability have therefore become key policy objectives. The UK Government response over the past decade or so has been extensive and multi-stranded including: abolition of the default retirement age (formerly 65) - most people can now work for as long as they want to; ongoing reforms to state pension age; pension deferral options; age discrimination legislation; welfare reform; improved access to flexible working opportunities; adult careers guidance; and developments in occupational health. These policy initiatives target both the demand and supply side, aiming to extend working lives, promote employment sustainability and improve opportunities in the labour market at older ages.

Gerhard Naegele: Recent German national policies and their effects on older workers´ employment rate

Older workers´ employment rate has risen strongly in Germany in the last decade. This has been caused mainly by favourable economic framework conditions and bynational policies. This contribution is focused on the latter. Amongst recent political projects recently introduced in Germany in order to raise older workers´ labour forceparticipation, on the labour supply side the stepwise increase of the legal retirement age from 65 to 67 shows first positive effects. Contrastingly, the recently introducedpossibility to retire two years ahead of the legal retirement age in case of 45 contribution years shows first negative effects. Likewise, the re-introduction of entitlements to (higher) contribution-based unemployment benefits for older workers can prolong unemployment spells. Further, government-subsidised part-time work for older workers has been abolished, since it has been used mainly in the bloc model, i.e. three years of full-time work and three years of no work (retirement) instead of six years of part time work. On the labour demand side, various measures were taken in order to motivate companies to hire and retain older workers, as wage and hiring subsidies, image campaigns and age discrimination legislation. Although

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these activities are well-intended, due to deadweight effects and displacement affects, positive effects on older workers are only partially to be found, which also applies to general labour demand. The paper shows which policies have been implemented in Germany and which are worth emulating by other countries, which are not and what could be done in order to raise older workers´ employment rate.

Marco Socci, Andrea Principi: The Policies For The Extension Of Working Life In Italy Between Lights And Shadows

Background: In Italy the ageing of the population puts pressure on both the labour market and the sustainability of the pension system. The study aims to describe therecent trend of labour market participation of older workers and the main policies implemented in Italy to enhance the extension of working life to tackle the demographic change of the country.Methods: Data on key-indicators concerning the participation of older people in the Italian labour market and pension system reforms, to provide descriptive resultson these issues, by using both international (i.e.EUROSTAT) and national sources (i.e. ISTAT). Moreover expert interviews and focus group to understand the impact of policies on the effective participation of older workers in the national labour market.Results: The trend of main labour market indicators relative to older workers (55-64) shows a gradual improvement in recent years (e.g. the employment rate rose from 33.8% in 2008 to 40.4% in 2012) although critical aspects still persist (e.g. the unemployment rate rose from 3.1% in 2008 to 5.3% in 2012). The last pensionreform (2012) introduced economic incentives to prolong the working life and the retirement age has been increased to 66 years. Anyway, according to experts,measures aimed at extending working life are not supported through organic policies in the Italian labour market.Conclusions: In order to promote the extension of working life, it is necessary to adopt organic policies and specific actions, developing issues such as employabilityand workability and practices of age management.

GSA Annual Scientific Meeting, 2015, November 18-22, Orlando

Symposium Programme Overview. The retirement experience: a cross cultural perspective Great Britain, USA and ItalyRetirement is undergoing significant change in Western societies as an increasingly individualised experience, with greater variety of timing and pattern. These changes, while reflecting greater freedoms, are also theorised as being associated with greater risk and insecurity. Of interest is the heterogeneity of the retirement experience and the circumstances associated with positive transitions. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, this symposium explores cross cultural differences in: motivations for retirement; lifestyle plans; anxieties about the transition; and anticipated retirement orientations. Potential implications of differences across these dimensions are also discussed both at the national level in terms of the extended working lives agenda and at the level of the individual in terms of longer term health, wealth and wellbeing. Variation reflects both inter-country cultural differences in relation to values and work/leisure ethics and also distinct welfare regimes shaping the opportunity structure confronting individuals at this stage of their lives. Findings are based on a 3 year study examining the transition from work to retirement in

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England, North West USA and Central Italy, using qualitative research methods. In this symposium results from the baseline year are presented while individuals were still employed with the intention of retiring within 12 months.

Smeaton presentation - Individual Symposium Abstract Title: Does retirement offer a ‘window of opportunity’ for healthy lifestyle change? Views from workers on the cusp of retirementConcerns about the burden of ageing populations on healthcare services have highlighted a need to encourage positive health-related behaviour. Lifestyle diseases can be prevented or delayed and it is suggested that interventions targeting people on the cusp of retirement may be particularly effective as this life-transition is associated with an increased risk of reduced physical activity, social engagement and healthy eating. Yet knowledge about the influence of retirement on various health behaviours remains sketchy - building on this largely quantitative evidence base the study introduces the voices of older people to explore whether the retirement transition represents a potential rupture with the past in terms of attitudes, expectations and practices in relation to healthy lifestyles. Using a habit discontinuity theoretical framework, the study examines: whether shifts to more positive health behaviours are part of their ‘anticipatory planning’; whether retirement is expected to lead to a break with past habits and lifestyles; and foreseen health risks associated with retirement.

Principi presentation - Individual Symposium Abstract Title: the anticipation of retirement in Italy, UK and US: expectations and plansSeveral theoretical perspectives seek to account for how well individuals adjust to retirement (including activity theory; disengagement theory; continuity theory; and lifecourse models). The experience of transitioning to retirement is far from being uniform due to heterogeneity at the individual, meso and macro levels. This study investigates the anticipation of retirement in the USA, Italy and England, based on 133 interviews with older workers very close to retirement. A conceptual framework is developed linking working context (e.g. positive or negative work experience and reasons for retirement) with general retirement expectations and specific plans for the retirement years. The impact of the opportunity structure on future plans is also highlighted, including how well developed are institutionalized opportunities for ‘meaningful’ activities during ‘retirement’ such as: paid work, volunteering, community engagement, or learning.

Cahill presentation - Individual Symposium Abstract Title: Does the option of continued work lead to a more optimistic view of retirement? In America the majority of older workers exit the labor force gradually, in stages, by reducing hours in career employment, moving to bridge jobs, or reentering the labor force. At the same time, older Americans’ views about retirement are generally positive. This paper explores the link between work options and individuals’ views about retirement. Data for this paper come from 38 original qualitative interviews of older Americans on the cusp of retirement in 2014 and from the HRS, a large ongoing nationally-representative longitudinal survey of older Americans. We also compare the experiences of older Americans with those of individuals on the cusp of retirement in Italy and the United Kingdom to explore cross-cultural differences. Preliminary evidence suggests that optimism about retirement is related to perceived

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work options in the years ahead, where work serves as a contingency plan if financial resources are insufficient or if leisure time is not fulfilling.

SESSION 2205 (SYMPOSIUM) Cahill et al (2015) To What Extent is Gradual Retirement a Product of Financial NecessityChanges in the retirement income landscape over the past 30 years have left older Americans more exposed to market forces than prior generations, and more reliant on earnings to ensure their financial stability. The source of these earnings comes in many forms, including phased retirement, bridge jobs and re-entry, and the diverse pathways to retirement may be good news on balance; however, for some these job changes may reflect hardship, as vulnerable populations seek employment to prevent falling into poverty at older ages. We assess the magnitude of this segment of older workers using data from the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing nationally-representative longitudinal survey of older Americans that began in 1992. A definitive u-shaped relationship exists between wages in career employment and bridge job prevalence, supporting the notion that one group transitions to bridge jobs for non-financial reasons while a sizable minority does so out of necessity.

The Gerontologist (2015) 55 (Suppl 2): 794-795.doi: 10.1093/geront/gnv429.04

Allied Social Sciences/American Economics Association (ASSA/AEA) January 2nd-3rd 2016 meetings in San Francisco

Cahill et al (2016) Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated? Considerable prior research has shown that the majority of older Americans with career employment do not exit the labour force directly from that career job. Rather, most move first to another job late in life, before complete labour force withdrawal. These intermediate jobs have been labelled “bridge jobs”, since they are assumed to be a bridge to complete retirement. One criticism of this research is that bridge job activity may be overstated because the definition of a bridge job in the existing literature does not require a change in occupation. This paper investigates the extent to which bridge jobs involve a change in occupation or a switch to part-time status, both of which may signal the start of a retirement transition, as opposed to continued career employment, albeit with a different employer. We utilize the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans that began in 1992. When all transitions after the career job are included, the vast majority of the men and women either changed occupations, reduced hours to part time, or both. We conclude that, by and large, those who changed jobs later in life did in fact do so as part of a retirement transition. Ignoring these subtleties does result in an overestimate of bridge job activity, but only a modest one.

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International Sociological Association 3rd ISA forum of Sociology . Work, Aging, and Health. RC11 Sociology of Aging. July 10-14, 2016

Javiera Cartagena-Farias: Does retirement improve health outcomes of older individuals? Comparison between retiring and remaining employed.The impact of health status on retirement decisions has been widely studied, there has been less attention focussed on researching the effect of retirement on health. Variation in the relationship between retirement and health outcomes and socio-economic group in particular has been under researched and remains a key gap in evidence. Three international harmonised longitudinal data sets, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are used to compare health and wellbeing outcomes of individuals following retirement compared to ‘matched’ individuals who remain employed. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) techniques are used together with the Difference-in-Difference methodology to control for unobservable characteristics of individuals and time fixed effects. Results are presented by age group (those up to and those over the State Pension age) and by socio-economic status and type of occupation. In addition, differences between countries are included, understanding not only individual characteristics but also country-level factors, as national pension system or working practices, likely have a simultaneous effect on health and retirement decisions. The findings have implications for policy – the impetus toward extending working lives and delayed retirement evident across the EU, US and beyond, may be associated with quite distinct consequences for different socio-economic groups.

Sarah Santini (INRCA National Institute of Health & Science on Ageing, Italy): Health and Wellbeing during the Transition to Retirement: The More the Fears the Less the Actions?

Introduction: Previous literature underlines that lifestyle and wellbeing may both improve or worsen after retirement. The main aim of this qualitative study is to increase the knowledge concerning health and wellbeing during the transition to retirement. This is an important topic to study, in order to find answers on how to reduce the deterioration of health and wellbeing once the professional life is over.Method:This is a qualitative longitudinal study about the transition to retirement of substantially healthy (i.e. retirement was not linked to health reasons) individuals, carried out in Italy on 40 subjects (mean age 60 years). The baseline interviews were carried out in spring 2014, some months before retirement, whereas the second ones in fall 2015, about 10 months after their retirement. Interviews were transcribed and textual data were coded and analysed using MAXQDA11. Results: Three main themes/groups emerged concerning anticipated health and wellbeing after retirement: improvement; about the same; worsening. Especially the first group (improvement) was characterized by the anticipation of plans in the direction of a positive change in terms of lifestyle activities (e.g. physical activities, diet, etc) and social life. Third group (worsening) was characterized by fears and anxieties and, contrary to what we would expect, they had no substantial plans for health and wellbeing improvement. The study also clarifies the development of these themes after retirement.

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Conclusions: Through specific strategies, stakeholders and policy makers should support older workers during the transition from work to retirement, to enhance health and wellbeing of individuals during retirement. Opportunities to this purpose should be increased especially for older workers who express health-related worries and anxieties for their future life as pensioners. Indeed, especially the latter, despite this fear, once retired could not act in the perspective of a correct lifestyle.

ESA Research Network on Ageing in Europe. 2016 Mid-term Conference “Ageing in Europe: Beyond the Work Centred Life Course?” September 14-16, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Barnes et al: Putting work in its place? Rebalancing labour market activities, leisure, family life and voluntary work after retirement.

There is increasing policy emphasis on extending working lives, but many individuals continue to retire in their 50s and early 60s, for a variety of reasons, positive and negative. It is arguable that there is a gap between these policy ambitions and the normative expectations of the current cohort of people in this age group, some of whom have already worked for 40 years with access to few of the flexible working options available in today’s labour market. The paper will explore initial trajectories into retirement, looking at whether and how ‘life after work’ represents a changed experience of autonomy and temporality in everyday life, using data from a cross-national qualitative longitudinal study of voluntary, non-health-related retirement funded by the ESRC/MRC. It will consider whether and to what extent retired people feel the need to ‘replace work’, and if so, which aspects they are seeking to replicate. This will include a discussion of attitudes to and practices in relation to part-time work, volunteering, and engagement in structured leisure activities as well as more informal and unstructured caring and leisure. Mindful of the critique that much literature on retirement tends to view this as an individual decision, the paper will also consider the ways in which choices about work/life balance at this life stage are made within the context of the household and the wider extended family, and reflect on the possible contribution of flexible working policies towards rebalancing labour market activities over the life course. 

Jürgen Bauknecht, Moritz Hess & Sebastian Pink: Hours Flexibility and Retirement Age This study analyses the effects of reduced weekly working hours on retirement timing and labor supply. The main hypothesis is that a decrease in weekly working hours (intensive margin) delays retirement and therefore raises employment rates (extensive margin), primarily due to reduced work stress. Based on data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA) effects on actual as well as preferred retirement timing are calculated. Bivariate results show that ceteris paribus reduced working hours prolonged working lives for more than one year. A similar effect is ascertained for retirement preferences. Further analytical steps explore causal mechanisms behind these associations. Following the argument that the shift to part-time work reduces the stress level and this in turn allows for longer working lives the

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assumption is the impact of working hours’ reduction is stronger amongst older workers with high physical and mental strain at the workplace. Based on additional explanatory variables as well as interaction effects between these, calculations show for which groups reduced weekly working hours can contribute to higher labor supply since losses in in the intensive margin are lower than gains in the extensive margin. These findings can contribute to policymakers´ and human resource managers´ effective micro targeting of old-age part-time programs towards special groups of older workers whose labor supply is raised due to these programs without substantial deadweight losses due to workers whose labor supply is reduced since losses in the intensive margin are higher than gains in the extensive margin.

Work Age Health and Employment – Evidence from Longitudinal Studies. 19-21 September 2016, University of Wuppertal, Germany

Jürgen Bauknecht, Moritz Hess & Sebastian Pink: Hours Flexibility and Retirement Age This study analyses the effects of reduced weekly working hours on retirement timing and labor supply. The main hypothesis is that a decrease in weekly working hours (intensive margin) delays retirement and therefore raises employment rates (extensive margin), primarily due to reduced work stress. Based on data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA) effects on actual as well as preferred retirement timing are calculated. Bivariate results show that ceteris paribus reduced working hours prolonged working lives for more than one year. A similar effect is ascertained for retirement preferences. Further analytical steps explore causal mechanisms behind these associations. Following the argument that the shift to part-time work reduces the stress level and this in turn allows for longer working lives the assumption is the impact of working hours’ reduction is stronger amongst older workers with high physical and mental strain at the workplace. Based on additional explanatory variables as well as interaction effects between these, calculations show for which groups reduced weekly working hours can contribute to higher labor supply since losses in in the intensive margin are lower than gains in the extensive margin. These findings can contribute to policymakers´ and human resource managers´ effective micro targeting of old-age part-time programs towards special groups of older workers whose labor supply is raised due to these programs without substantial deadweight losses due to workers whose labor supply is reduced since losses in the intensive margin are higher than gains in the extensive margin.

GSA Annual Scientific Meeting, 2016, November 16-20. New Lens on Ageing: Changing Attitudes, Expanding Possibilities

Deborah Smeaton: Declining job satisfaction, extending working life (EWL) and the ‘new capitalism’

Studies have repeatedly shown that older workers are generally more committed to their organisations and have higher job satisfaction than younger workers. This satisfaction/commitment premium, however, has been slipping. Using nationally

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representative British datasets the paper demonstrates that older employees’ overall job attitudes have been declining, relative to younger employees, since the early 90s. It is speculated that these trends reflect psychological contract breach arising from shifts toward a ‘new capitalism’ associated with internationalised and deregulated market competition and short term profit maximisation. Commercial/ financial pressures have led employers in both the public and private sectors increasingly to maximise the efficiency of individual employees; with less tolerance for poorly aligned performance and rewards. ‘Safe havens’ in late career have therefore all but disappeared. Within Lazear’s (1981) deferred compensation framework, older workers will thereby perceive their expectations (formed in previous decades) as being unmet. Support for the suggestion that declining job attitudes are associated with the ‘new capitalism’ and perceptions of psychological contract violation is provided by evidence from a complementary in-depth qualitative study, conducted in 2015, of the retirement motives of 55 older English workers aged 55-69. A strong emergent theme related specifically to a sense of deteriorating working conditions with many instances of workers leaving their jobs due to the experience of increasing demands, cultures of continuous change, burgeoning bureaucratic overload, and other changes in the workplace which amounted to jobs feeling qualitatively different from those entered years ago. Tensions between the ‘new capitalism’ and longer working life agenda were therefore evident.

International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG). 21st IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics, which is being hosted by The Gerontological Society of America July 23-27, 2017 • San Francisco

Deborah Smeaton. Retirement Adjustment – The Early Years: A 3 Country Qualitative Comparison

Abstract: In a review of psychological perspectives on the changing experience of retirement, Schultz and Wang note (2011: 8) “retirees actively shape their experiences in retirement. As active selves, retirees reflect on and evaluate their experiences [and] are able to modify their environment to shape their retirement experiences”. Such perspectives emphasise the salience of self-efficacy, agency and proactive behaviour in shaping retired life, but can produce an under socialised conception of the individual agent. In theorising retirement transitions and outcomes it is important to account also for the extent to which retired lifestyles and ‘choices’ are constrained or facilitated by broader opportunities, cultural context and social structure. Social position, labour markets, welfare and pension systems set the context in which retirement pathways unfold. Opportunities may also be more locally determined, with community hubs, associational activity and local facilities playing an important role in the promotion of social integration.

In order to explore the influence of social context and opportunity structures on the experience of ‘retirement’ this paper examines a sample of 135 older people aged 55+ interviewed over 3 years as they made the transition from work to retirement in Italy, USA and England – each characterised by distinct cultural orientations and

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welfare regimes. Using qualitative methods, the paper introduces the voices of these retirees to gain insights into: their retirement journeys; pleasures and disappointments; social roles and activities; and the opportunities and obstacles encountered in pursuing aspirations. Implications of findings for concepts such as ‘successful ageing’ and ‘active ageing’ are highlighted.

Objective 1: After attending this session, participants will gain an understanding of how the experience of retirement can be shaped by different welfare regimes, distinct cultural contexts, social position and local opportunity structures with implications for health and wellbeing.

Objective 2: The session also highlights some limitations of the ‘successful ageing’ concept. Study findings suggest: the need for theories which account for dynamism of retirement journeys; retired life is multi-dimensional to an extent that defies a binary definition of success; and an overemphasis on individual agency downplays the significance of factors beyond individual control – including social structure, local community strength, cultural expectations and wider regulatory context.

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ContactIf you have any questions about the findings or the study please contact Deborah Smeaton at the Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster: d.smeaton@psi.org.uk