Research project Working conditions in late working life, paths to retirement and health after retirement

By studying individual life courses from a number of European countries, the overarching aims of this project is to analyse: (1) how physical, psychological and social working conditions in late working life, together with socioeconomic position and gender, shape individuals’ retirement trajectories; (2) the extent to which these retirement trajectories are influenced by the institutional arrangements of the welfare state; and (3) how these retirement trajectories are related to health after retirement.

A central point of departure for the project is that exit from working life for many individuals is an extended process over time characterized by different combinations of work and time outside the labour force and sources of income. Work environment factors, together with welfare state arrangements, are important in this context as they may influence the exit routes that are open and possible for individuals to take.

An important methodological foundation of the project is so-called sequence analysis that is particularly suited for analysing complex life courses. The project uses individual-level panel data from the SHARE survey, conducted six times since 2004 and currently including 27 countries, combined with country-level data on welfare state arrangements from the so-called SPIN database.