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Many governments world-wide are promoting longer working life due to the social and economic repercussions of demographic change. However, not all workers are equally able to extend their employment careers. Thus, while national policies raise the overall level of labour market participation, they might create new social and labour market inequalities. This paper explores how institutional differences in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan affect individual retirement decisions on the aggregate level, and variations in individuals’ degree of choice within and across countries. We investigate which groups of workers are disproportionately at risk of being ‘pushed’ out of employment, and how such inequalities have changed over time. We use comparable national longitudinal survey datasets focusing on the older population in England, Germany and Japan. Results point to cross-national differences in retirement transitions. Retirement transitions in Germany have occurred at an earlier age than in England and Japan. In Japan, the incidence of involuntary retirement is the lowest, reflecting an institutional context prescribing that employers provide employment until pension age, while Germany and England display substantial proportions of involuntary exits triggered by organisational-level redundancies, persistent early retirement plans or individual ill-health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Faced with demographic ageing, European policy makers since the mid-1990s have taken a turn from fostering early retirement to promoting longer working life by reducing early exit incentives and facilitating work continuation. However, it remains open whether these reforms are yet reflected in the retirement plans and preferences of future pensioners’ cohorts. Using most recent data on desired retirement ages from the fifth wave of the European Social Survey (2010/11 wave), this paper empirically investigates how far current policy reforms are in line with the retirement age preferences of older workers aged 45 and over. Results show that older workers approaching retirement ages still intend to retire before the politically envisioned age of 65, and in many cases also before nationally defined standard retirement ages. Despite visible progress in implementing active ageing measures, the challenge of motivating older workers to continue working until or even beyond retirement ages thus remains. At the same time, there are regime-specific problem groups that face difficulties in adjusting to the active ageing paradigm of longer working life. Especially in countries with little employment support, those with unstable work careers, employment interruptions and few financial resources are at a high risk of being crowded out from late career employment and thus from the possibility of ensuring a decent standard of living in old age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After a long period of promoting early retirement, European societies have recently started to implement various reforms aimed at fostering a longer working life. Yet cross-national variations in older workers' employment remain, as institutional path dependency, socio-economic climate and persistent retirement culture have not allowed all countries to implement reforms to the same degree. In our paper, we provide an up-to-date international overview of country-specific contexts that support or hinder the employment of older workers in European countries. To this end, we use information on labour market, pension, and welfare policies that affect older workers' employment opportunities and retirement decisions. Adding to previous research, we contrast these “structural” indicators with selected “cultural” evidence from the European Survey data (Eurobarometer, European Social Survey) reflecting recent trends in retirement-related attitudes, perceptions and preferences. The available data allow for an unusually broad geographical scope, encompassing both Western European and Eastern European societies. Using these data, we perform a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify the specific types of “retirement regimes”. Finally, we relate these “new worlds of retirement” to the differentiation of “early” versus “late” exit regimes suggested by earlier literature to identify the forerunners and laggards in the gradual transition towards later retirement in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]