Retirement is a major life-course transition for which some people plan more than others. Given that planning positively affects retirement adjustment, it is important to investigate the heterogeneity in retirement planning and its antecedents. While financial preparation has been thoroughly investigated, little is known about the activities older workers plan to do in retirement. We hypothesize that older workers' plans for retirement activities can be categorized into 3 domains: bridge employment, selfdevelopmental leisure, and social leisure. Moreover, we expect these plans to be affected by workers' opportunities for continuity, spousal support, and perception of time. We test these hypotheses using data from the first wave of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute Pension Panel Study (NPPS). The study consists of a sample of almost 6,800 Dutch older workers who were asked about their plans to engage in 10 different activities in retirement. Where relevant, spouses of older workers were also surveyed, providing multiactor data for these couples (N ϭ 4,052). Our results support the classification of retirement activity plans into 3 domains. Moreover, the results of structural equation models confirm that the activities for which older workers plan are related to their opportunity structure (i.e., occupational status, number of preretirement leisure activities, number of social roles), spousal support to engage in these activities, and older workers' perception of time (i.e., future time perspective, perceived life expectancy). Our findings can help identify older workers who might face a more difficult retirement transition, because they have fewer plans to address the various psychosocial aspects of retirement.

The general assumption in past research on coupled retirement is that men and women prefer joint retirement. The current study tests this assumption and hypothesizes that preferences to retire jointly are associated with a) the work and relationship attachment of both members of the couple, and b) the respective spouse's preferences. The results show that the majority of dual-earner couples have no preference for joint retirement. Male and female spouses with either weak work attachment or strong relationship attachment are more likely to prefer to retire jointly. Moreover, spouses strongly influence each other's preferences.

The interdependence between partners raises considerable interest in the sociology of life course, work, and families. Partner influences play a particularly important role in the work domain, because each partner’s work decisions have profound effects on the couple as a whole. In contrast to previous research, this article pays detailed attention to the role a partner plays in workers’ labour market decisions by analysing the case of early retirement decisions. We hypothesized that partners’ preferences for older workers’ retirement originate from altruism and self-interest. Moreover, we expected that partners influence older workers’ early retirement behaviour via persuasion and pressure. To adequately estimate partners’ and workers’ preferences for the worker’s retirement, we used an instrumental variable approach. This was possible because we collected multi-actor longitudinal data from a large representative sample of older workers and their partners in the Netherlands. The results support that spousal preferences originate in altruism and self-interest and that partners influence workers through persuasion and pressure. Gender differences in origins and mechanisms of partner influence are also discussed.

This study goes beyond a purely financial perspective to explain why single older workers prefer to retire later than their partnered counterparts. We aim to show how the work (i.e., its social meaning) and home domain (i.e., spousal influence) contribute to differences in retirement preferences by relationship status. Analyses were based on multiactor data collected in 2015 among older workers in the Netherlands (N = 6,357) and (where applicable) their spouses. Results revealed that the social meaning of work differed by relationship status but not always as expected. In a mediation analysis, we found that the social meaning of work partically explained differences in retirement preferences by relationship status. We also show that single workers preferred to retire later than workers with a “pulling” spouse, earlier than workers with a “pushing” spouse, and at about the same time as workers with a neutral spouse.