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In the last 20 years, German policy makers have reformed the pension system and the labor market with the aim of prolonging working life. As a consequence, older workers' employment rate and average retirement age rose. In addition to the actual behavior of today's retiree cohorts, the reforms also influence the expected retirement age of future pensioners, the development of which will be investigated in this paper, arguing that they have adapted to the reforms and increased their expected retirement age. The analyses are based on data from the SOEP and DEAS survey and results show an increase of the expected retirement age. However, while high-skilled workers both want and expect to retire late, low-skilled workers prefer to retire early but expect that they have to work longer in order to ensure a reasonable pension. This finding hints at rising social inequality in the transition from work to retirement.

Involuntary retirement transitions have a variety of negative consequences for individuals and society as they can lead to poorer health or lower wellbeing. Therefore, it is of high relevance to better understand the factors influencing the voluntariness of retirement transitions. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the known determinants of the voluntariness of retirement. Our final review includes 14 studies that empirically investigate this topic. Differentiated by micro-, meso- and macro-levels, we present the identified factors and discuss different ways of operationalizing voluntary or involuntary retirement. We found that most studies analyse individual factors. There is a gap in research on influencing factors at the company level as well as the welfare state level. In addition, it is of interest to examine whether and to what extent pension and labour market policy reforms have led to changes over time.

Modernization theory has often been used to explain country differences in levels of ageism. The commentary at hand questions its usefulness in the analysis of ageism today for two reasons. First, modernization theory was developed to discuss social status of older people, not ageism. Second, social policies and management practices that emerged with industrialization are being rolled back over the last decades. We therefore argue for the reconsideration of the relationship between modernization and ageism and to re-assess it in order to better explain country differences in ageism in the 21st century.

Background: Physical and mental health are important markers of quality of life. Little is known about how they unfold in tandem in the last years of life. Objective: We take a life-course perspective to identify typical joint trajectories of functional limitations and depression in the last eight years before death. Our objective is to assess whether there is only a linear association between functional limitations and depression or if we also find groups marked by high and increasing functional limitations but low depression, and vice versa. Methods: Data from 10 waves of the Health and Retirement Study that cover US Americans who died between 2003-2014 are analyzed with sequence, cluster, and multinomial logistic regression methods. Results: Results show five typical trajectories of joint functional limitations and depression. Corroborating previous findings, three groups support a linear positive relationship between functional limitations and depression. Beyond previous research, we find two resilient groups of medium and high functional limitations combined with stable low depression. The five groups are highly stratified by social status, gender, marital status, and subjective life expectancy reported at the beginning of the trajectories. Conclusions: Physical and mental health trajectories at the end of life are not only linearly associated. Medium and high functional limitations go along with a polarized pattern of either stable high or stable low depression. Contribution: The nonlinear relationship between functional limitations and depression in the last years of life represented by the 'Resilient' groups of medium and high functional limitations with low depression have gone largely unnoticed in previous research and should be investigated in future studies.

From a political economy perspective, politicians often fail to implement structural reforms. In this contribution we investigate if the resistance to reform is based on the differences in the risk preferences of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. Based on three surveys among the German electorate, 175 members of the Federal German Parliament and 106 officials from German ministries, this is not the case. Since both politicians and bureaucrats have a higher risk appetite than the voters, their risk preferences cannot be seen as an explanation for the resistance to structural reform. Hence, it must be caused by other reasons. These could be interventions by veto players, wars of attrition by powerful interest groups, or reform logjams initiated. However, as during times of populist campaigns, the election process can put forth candidates with very high risk appetites, the constitutions of democracies turn out to be rather smart if hazardous actions and measures by political rookies and gamblers are inhibited by checks and balances.

Objective: We explore gender differences in support of the norm that children must provide care for their parents. Background: Society's values and norms play a crucial role in deciding whether to provide family care. We investigate these values and norms on family care by analyzing which individual and country level factors affect them. Method: We use data from the European Values Study wave 5 and multilevel regression techniques. The question, "Adult children have the duty to provide long-term care for their parents", serves as our dependent variable. The explanatory variables at the individual level are gender and further socio-demographic variables. At the country level, we include expenditures on health care, and the female labor force participation rate. Results: The results show that women, as well as those living in countries with high expenditure on health care and high female labor force participation rates, are less supportive of the norm that children have an obligation to provide care for their parents. Furthermore, the gender effect is stronger in countries with a higher female labor force participation rate. Conclusion: Norms and values on family care are not fixed and can change, as suggested by the differences between countries. They are also not shared by all social groups equally, as the differences between women and men and along other socio-demographics show. Replication files: https://ubp.uni-bamberg.de/jfr/index.php/jfr/article/view/854/704.