Abstract
A key concern about population aging is the decline in the size of the economically active population. Working longer is a potential remedy. However, little is known about the length of working life and how it relates to macroeconomic conditions. We use the U.S. Health and Retirement Study for 1992–2011 and multistate life tables to analyze working life expectancy at age 50 and study the impact of the Great Recession in 2007–2009. Despite declines of one to two years following the recession, in 2008–2011, American men aged 50 still spent 13 years, or two-fifths of their remaining life, working; American women of the same age spent 11 years, or one-third of their remaining life, in employment. Although educational differences in working life expectancy have been stable since the mid-1990s, racial differences started changing after the onset of the Great Recession. Our results show that although Americans generally work longer than people in other countries, considerable subpopulation heterogeneity exists. We also find that the time trends are fluctuating, which may prove troublesome as the population ages. Policies targeting the weakest performing groups may be needed to increase the total population trends.
Highlights
Population aging is one of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century
Several other studies focusing on working life expectancy (WLE) defined it in terms of labor force activity (e.g., Millimet et al 2003; Skoog and Ciecka 2010; Warner et al 2010)—that is, covering both employment and unemployment—whereas we focus on employment only
Using data from the U.S Health and Retirement Study to construct period working life tables by gender, race/ethnicity, and education, we analyzed the impact of the Great Recession
Summary
Population aging is one of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century. In the coming decades, the number of people aged 65 and older will grow substantially in the vast majority of countries (United Nations 2015). In the years following that recession, the unemployment rate more than doubled, from 4.6 % in 2007 to 9.6 % in 2010 (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016) This shock likely had an impact on the average length of working life in the United States, both the direction and magnitude of the effects are unknown given the evidence of trends toward both decreasing employment and postponed retirement. We use 20 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to calculate period working life tables for five-year intervals We use these tables to analyze recent developments in WLE at age 50 in the United States, with a focus on the changes in WLE following the Great Recession.
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