Leaving early or staying on? Retirement preferences and motives among older health-care professionals

Mikael Stattin,Carita Bengs

doi:10.1017/s0144686x2100026x

Abstract

AbstractThere is a need for improved knowledge about how workplace conditions and organisational factors may obstruct or facilitate work in late life. By means of both quantitative and qualitative data, this study aims to explore retirement preferences among employees (aged 55 and older) in a large Swedish health-care organisation and to identify work-related motives influencing their retirement preferences. The quantitative analysis showed large variation in retirement preferences in the organisation. The qualitative results were summarised into two overarching types of motives for late and early retirement preferences, general and group-specific. The general motives were shared by the early and late preference groups, and included recognition, flexibility, health and work motivation. The group-specific motives were exclusively related to either an early or a late retirement preference. Criticism towards the organisation and strenuous working conditions were specific motives for an early retirement preference, while positive accounts of work and a wish to utilise one's own competencies as well as being financially dependent on work was stated as specific motives for wanting to retire late. The results illustrate the need to improve organisational practices and routines, as well as working conditions, in order to make an extended working life accessible for more than already-privileged groups of employees.

Highlights

Most scholars today would agree that the transition from active work to retirement is a complex and dynamic process during which individuals’ motivation and preferences vis-à-vis work are in continuous interplay with various contextual factors at different analytical levels
Research has demonstrated that the configuration of welfare state provisions and incentive structures in old-age pension and early retirement programmes have a large impact on the levels of work participation in late age (Kohli et al, 1991; Ebbinghaus, 2006; Fisher et al, 2016)
Retirement preferences were studied through the question: ‘Based on today’s prerequisites, at what age would you like to retire?’, where the respondents were asked to fill in their preferred age for retirement

Summary

Introduction

Most scholars today would agree that the transition from active work to retirement is a complex and dynamic process during which individuals’ motivation and preferences vis-à-vis work are in continuous interplay with various contextual factors at different analytical levels. Research has demonstrated that the configuration of welfare state provisions and incentive structures in old-age pension and early retirement programmes have a large impact on the levels of work participation in late age (Kohli et al, 1991; Ebbinghaus, 2006; Fisher et al, 2016). The national public pension is a contributory system which means that pension levels depend on incomes throughout the whole life, on occupational pensions and on private savings. To stimulate late exit from the labour market, the system is incentivised so that taking a pension before the age of 65 implies a reduced level of pension income while withdrawal from work after 65 gives annually a 7–8 per cent increase in pension income (Socialdepartementet 2016)

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