Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The practice of mandatory retirement age implies that some retirees may be forced to retire or are compelled to continue working. Retirement would then be determined by age and not by their personal choices. Against this backdrop, this study aims to understand the associations retirement transition types (voluntary or involuntary retirement) with retirement satisfaction and life satisfaction.


Design/methodology/approach
This mixed research study seeks to understand how the retirement transition type in the form of voluntary or involuntary retirement is associated with retirement satisfaction and life satisfaction. In this study, 103 Singapore baby boomer retirees were interviewed and a questionnaire was administered.


Findings
Results showed that voluntary retirement and high social–emotional resources had significant positive associations with retirement satisfaction, and that financial resources and retirement satisfaction had significant associations with life satisfaction.


Research limitations/implications
Based on this study's findings, a synthesized conceptual model was designed to illustrate the different roles and associations of resources with retirement satisfaction and life satisfaction. A retirement trajectory model was also created to cater for policy design at various stages of the retirement experience.


Practical implications
The retirement experience is multi-dimensional. It is highly relevant to almost every older adult. The relevance of this topic also meant that the findings in this study carry a potentially higher impact. Using the life span and multi-level perspectives to examine retirement, the findings in this study invite several timely human resources (HR) and national policy reviews. This paper proposed HR policy practices at three main points – late-career, retirement and bridge employment.


Originality/value
A unique feature of this study was to differentiate and compare "retirement satisfaction" with "life satisfaction", and the differentiation of "retirement transition", "retirement adjustment" and the "retirement trajectory". The differentiation of these concepts can better shape policies targeted at different phases of the retirement experience. In addition, the resource-based dynamic perspective was used to identify and understand the types of resources that have significant associations with retirement and life satisfaction. For example, social–emotional resources were found to be significantly associated with retirement satisfaction, and financial resources were found to be significantly associated with life satisfaction.

This paper investigates the causal effects of the announcement of an increase in the statutory pension age on employee retirement expectations. In June 2010, the Dutch government signed a new pension agreement with the employer and employee organizations that entailed an increase in the statutory pension age from 65 currently to 66 in 2020 for all inhabitants born after 1954. Given the expected increase in average life expectancy, it was also decided that in 2025 the pension age would be further increased to 67 for those born after 1959. This new pension agreement received huge media coverage. Using representative matched administrative and survey data of public sector employees, we find that the proposed policy reform increased the expected retirement age by 3.6 months for employees born between 1954 and 1959 and by 10.8 months for those born after 1959. This increase is reflected in a clear shift in the retirement peak from age 65 to ages 66 and 67 for the respective treated cohorts. Men respond less strongly to the policy reform than women, but within couples we find no evidence that the retirement expectations of one spouse are affected by an increase in the statutory pension age of the other. Furthermore, we show that treatment effects are largely driven by highly educated individuals but are lower for employees whose job involves physically demanding tasks or managerial and supervisory tasks.

We examine the impact of mandatory retirement on the retirement decisions of professors in Canada using administrative data. We find that the age distributions of professors at universities without mandatory retirement and those at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have diverged over time with a higher fraction of professors over the age of 65 being at universities without mandatory retirement. Estimation of a discrete time hazard model indicates that faculty members at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have exit rates at age 65 that are around 30 to 36 percentage points higher than those of their counterparts at universities without mandatory retirement. Similar results are found for both men and women; however, the magnitude of this effect is somewhat smaller for women.