New Evidence on Initial Transition from Career Job to Retirement in Japan

The interval in time between leaving a career job and exit from the labor force is especially long for Japanese employees. We examine determinants of post‐career work arrangements from two perspectives: work status and the route to a second job. We show that these determinants differ between male and female workers and that the customary function of career employers to place their workers in a second job has declined since the middle of the 1990s.     

Early Retirement and Bridge Employment Intentions Among Older Workers in Singapore

This paper examined the relevance of 14 demographic, cognitive, and affective factors in individuals' intentions to voluntarily retire early and to secure bridge employment after retirement. Results based on a sample of 361 respondents aged between 40 and 59 suggested that marital status, perceived negative age-health relationship, gender psychological readiness for retirement, and family orientation were related to early retirement intentions. Work centrality, perceived organisational attitude towards older employees, and psychological readiness for early retirement were related to bridge employment intentions. Implications for research were discussed.     

Mandatory Retirement and Faculty Retirement Decisions

As a result of the 1986 Age Discrimination in Employment Act, colleges and universities were no longer allowed to impose mandatory retirement on faculty members at age seventy after 1994. This paper estimates the change in retirement rates of faculty before and after the ending of mandatory retirement using data from the University of North Carolina (UNC) system. The analysis reveals a sharp decline in the probability of faculty at UNC retiring at age seventy once the university was unable to impose forced retirement.     

Does Pension Wealth Peak at the Age of Early Retirement?

Once an employee has qualified for early retirement, continuing to work involves an implicit tax in the form of forgone pension payments. We explore this implicit pension tax in a Canadian setting and find that, contrary to Lazear (1983), but consistent with most U.S. studies, pension wealth generally does not peak at the date of first eligibility for early retirement. We highlight the importance of the earnings path posited for older workers, anticipated enrichments to flat benefit formulas, and the distinction between reduced and unreduced early retirement as determinants of this result.     

The Impact of Research Productivity on Early Retirement of University Professors

Using samples of several hundred faculty at the University of California, this study examines whether declining research productivity is related to the acceptance of an early retirement program. Research productivity is measured by the number of papers published per year for 3 years and 15 years before the announcement of the early-retirement program. The ratio of the 3-year publication measure to the 15-year publication measure was used to measure the extent of decline in research output. Results suggest that professors who published less than peers during the 3 years before the retirement programs and those whose research output had declined more than that of peers were more likely to retire early.     

Job Characteristics and Labor Market Discrimination in Promotions

We extend promotion signaling theory to generate new testable implications concerning racial differences in promotions. In our model, promotions signal worker ability. When tasks differ substantially across job levels, the opportunity cost of not promoting qualified non‐whites/non‐Asians is large, so employers are less likely to inefficiently withhold their promotions. Thus, given prepromotion performance, the extent to which non‐whites/non‐Asians have lower promotion probabilities decreases when tasks vary more across levels. Racial differences in wage increases at promotion diminish when tasks vary more across levels. Evidence from a single firm's personnel records supports the model's predictions concerning promotion probabilities.     

Redundancy and Early Retirement: The Interaction of Public and Private Policy in Britain, Germany and the USA

Labour force reductions have been a major issue in industrial relations in Western countries since the mid-1970s. Early retirement has enabled employers to structure these reductions better to suit their interests, and to reduce the damage to industrial peace which would otherwise occur. This paper looks at the role and nature of early retirement in cases of redundancy in three countries with different industrial relations and social insurance systems. Attention is given to how compensatory policies undermine protective policies; how the costs of early retirement are shared between the state and enterprises; the adequacy of early retirement benefits and their impact upon post-retirement income; and whether the state can be said to encourage early retirement.     

Pension Type and Retirement Wealth

In this article I analyze the effect of a shift from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution pensions on retirement wealth. Regressions results suggest that workers with a defined-benefit pension appear to have more retirement resources than those who either have no pension or have a defined-contribution pension, although individual savings is generally insufficient. I use the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), which contains data on individuals 51 to 61 years of age.     

Advance Notice and Job Search: More on the Value of an Early Start

This paper investigates the effects of advance notice of impending job loss on the length of jobless spells of displaced workers. We evaluate the performance of a formal search model and offer a generalization of the model that provides an alternative but related approach to the most recent empirically based literature. Evidence of gains from early search are found for all broad gender-occupation groups except blue-collar males.     

The Wage Premium for Job Seniority During the 1980s and Early 1990s

In this article I use Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to study whether the rewards for job tenure have fallen since the early 1980s. An upward-sloping seniority-wage profile is generally thought to be an important dimension of compensation during a career. However, recent interest in the incidence of layoffs and changes in the structure of firms gives rise to the possibility that employment contracts are less often being structured to reward tenure or that such contracts are more difficult to honor. Using a two-stage estimator to attempt to control unmeasured individual and job match effects on wages, I find some evidence that the wage premium paid to senior workers has declined moderately. However, I find that these results are mildly sensitive to alternative methods of handling the relatively noisy PSID tenure data.     

Retirement Reforms: Occupational Strain and Health

A concurrent increase in the demand for state age pensions and health care has led to reforms in delaying retirement. We employ thirteen waves of longitudinal data to examine the mental and physical health effects of Australian men and women at “early” and “traditional” retirement. We use before and after propensity score matching (PSM) estimates between treatment and control groups of retired and not retired individuals aged 60 and 65 years. The results indicate a negative health effect according to occupational strain for both genders but a positive mental health effect for retirees with access to self‐funded retirement.     

Job Satisfaction and Promotions

This paper estimates the impact of promotions and promotion expectations on job satisfaction using the 1996–2006 waves of the NLSY79 dataset. Having received a promotion in the past 2 years leads to increased job satisfaction, even while controlling for the worker’s current wage, wage rank within her peer group, and wage growth. Workers who believe a promotion is possible in the next 2 years also report higher job satisfaction. Additionally, past promotions have a lingering, but fading impact on job satisfaction.     

Career Employment and Job Stopping

Career jobs typically end well before retirement and are followed by a period of postcareer employment. Although the most financially successful transitions occur when new positions are obtained in the same industry and occupation as the career job, mobility usually involves a change in industry andlor in occupation. Pension-covered career jobs last longer and more frequently end in retirement than noncovered positions. Pensions may also reduce the probability that retirements occur at very young ages and delay retirements when coverage is first obtained in postcareer employment.     

Job satisfaction and employer-sponsored training

This article examines whether participation in employer-sponsored training has a causal impact on job satisfaction by accounting for individual fixed effects, individual-by-employer fixed effects and controlling for promotions in a sub-sample of the data to address the endogeneity of participation arising from within employer job changes. The estimates show a consistent, positive effect of participation in employer-sponsored training on job satisfaction. Conversely, participation in other types of training does not have a significant impact upon job satisfaction. Additionally, participation in employer-sponsored training has a strong, negative correlation with turnover even while controlling for job satisfaction. Training does not exhibit a lasting effect of either job satisfaction or turnover.     

Transitions From Career Jobs to Retirement in Japan

Most Japanese workers are required to retire from their career firm by age 60. Yet the labor force participation rate of older men in Japan is the highest among industrialized countries, and most Japanese express a strong desire to continue working past age 60. One explanation for this paradox is that many firms reemploy their own retirees or provide them with assistance in finding new jobs with their subsidiaries or client firms.