The Determinants of Retirement: the crucial impact of the last occupation.

Understanding the changes that occur in employment patterns as people grow older and the paths they take from employment to retirement may help to apprehend the factors that encourage or discourage employment retention. The aims of this paper are to analyse the process leading up to retirement among older workers in France and to better understand individual factors that influence the transition from employment to retirement. From an international perspective, France is an interesting case because its activity rate is particularly low for people between 55 and 65 years old in comparison with other OECD countries. We estimate a series of probit and Cox duration models that analyze the determinants of the decision to retire. Our results suggest that gender, status and the last occupation held influence retirement decisions. However, contrary to other papers, we find that the socio-professional situation of an individual has a limited impact on the retirement decision.