Regulating the Transition From Work to Retirement: Towards a New Distribution of Responsibilities Between the State, Social Partners and Companies?

Abstract

Germany has experienced a fundamental shift in the architecture of the old-age pension system since the turn of the century. While research has focused on the reduction of benefit levels, scholars have paid less attention to the changing framework for the transition into retirement. Lawmakers abolished options for early or flexible retirement in the public system, shifting responsibility for this issue to collective and company agreements. This paper investigates how different actors addressed their new responsibilities for shaping workers’ transition from employment to retirement. It relies on an empirical study with a mixed methods research design, including a representative quantitative company survey, a qualitative analysis of different industries, company case studies, and analyses of collective agreements. We observe significant variation between industries and companies that have developed life-course-oriented options for their employees and others that have hardly taken up the issue. Consequently, the new architecture of old age security has led to new inequalities between workers of different industries and even within companies. The article contributes to our understanding of the political dynamics accompanying demographic and economic change across Europe and beyond by demonstrating the role of institutions and coordination mechanisms in producing variegated forms of citizenship. Keywords: old-age pension system, transition from work to retirement, flexible retirement, collective agreements, occupational pensions, multi-level-governance, inequality.