In this paper we argue that mandatory retirement is only one aspect of a much broader system that influences an individual's retirement decision. We look at responses over time to variations in mandatory retirement rules faced by a sample of private-sector workers aged 62-64 in 1973. This is...

How have post-career transitions into and out of self-employment been impacted by the Great Recession? Research from the 1990s and 2000s has shown that the prevalence of self employment increases substantially later in life, partly because self employment provides older workers with...

To what extent do older Americans re-enter the labor force after an initial exit and what drives these “unretirement” decisions? Retirement for most older Americans with full-time career jobs is not a one-time, permanent event. Labor force exit is more likely to be a process. Prior studies...

Controlling for career employment later in life, the retirement patterns of men and women in America have resembled one another for much of the past two decades. Is this relationship coming to an end? Recent research suggests that the retirement patterns of the Early Boomers – those born...

In this paper, we compare the patterns of labor force withdrawal of older workers in seven OECD countries. We find wide variation in retirement patterns and recent trends. In Sweden and the United States, for example, it is relatively common for workers to combine retirement benefits and...