The Association Between the Work Place Characteristics and the Older People's Decision to Work Beyond the Retirement Age: Using the Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model (HGLM) Approach

Background and purpose:Researchers report that financial and health status are the most influential factors affecting the decision of older people to work beyond the retirement age, indicating that this older population of workers tends to struggle financially but to enjoy relatively good health. However, it is unclear whether or not the workplace in which older people worked before reaching the age of retirement plays any role in those decisions. This study aims to expand the understanding of how the characteristics of the pre-retirement work environment affect the older people's decision to continue working. Thus, this study poses the following primary research question: When the effects of financial and health status are ruled out, do the characteristics of work that older people had before the retirement age significantly impact their decision to continue working after the retirement age? Life Course Flexibility provided this study's theoretical framework.

Methods: This study, which uses the 2006 dataset of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), defines the retirement age as 65; this limits the study population to individuals age 65+. The research outcome, the current work status, is measured by either being retired or working part- or full-time. Analysis variables are divided by individual level (level 1) and work level (level 2). The individual level variables include the following: age; gender; race; years of education; number of chronic diseases; and income-assets such as respondent and spouse earnings, Social Security benefits, pension, and household capital. The level 2 predictors consist of the following characteristics that define the pre-retirement work: average salary, firm size, and elder-friendly atmosphere. The data is analyzed by the Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model (HGLM) analysis.

Results: The findings show that the individual level variables of age, gender, years of education, and health are significant factors; compared to older adults who decided to retire, those who are currently working beyond the age 65 are more likely to be younger men who have a lower level of education and fewer chronic diseases. When these effects are ruled out, the financial factor does not play a significant role in predicting the work status of older individuals. Among the work level predictors, only an elder-friendly atmosphere, not average salary or firm size, affects the work status of older people. This demonstrates that a one unit increase in the elder-friendly environment at work increases older people's likelihood of working by 2.542 times.

Conclusions and implications: Health still emerges as a significant factor that affects the older people's decision to work after the retirement age, even when financial status and the characteristics of the work place are considered altogether. Moreover, this study finds that older workers tend to base their post-retirement work decisions on the atmospheres of their previous work place. A work environment in which employers did not favor younger employees over older ones in terms of promotion and did not make older workers feel that they ought to retire at age 65 plays a positive role in keeping older people involved in employment.