Flexible transitions from work to retirement in Germany

Recently the broader German public and actors of the labor market have become more aware of challenges of the demographic change. The current debate started with the gradual increase of the retirement age to 67 in Germany, which was decided on in 2007 and has been the subject of controversy since then. Gradually also the phenomenon of work beyond retirement is being discussed. Following the very first analysis of Deller and Maxin (2009) of German microcensus data for work in retirement, Micheel and Panova (2013) also used microcensus data to look into two decades of work in retirement. These developments take place a few years before the retirement of the first German baby boomer cohorts and their necessary replacement in the labor market with cohorts that are smaller by hundreds of thousands of individuals per year. As a consequence, we can notice a growing interest in the intentions and behaviors of retiring cohorts regarding work in retirement.