Exploring the relationship between working history, retirement transition and women's life satisfaction

Abstract

How does the transition to retirement affect female subjective wellbeing? The major theoretical perspectives that have been applied as frameworks to study the heterogeneous adjustment to retirement include role theory and continuity theory. They have often been integrated with a lifecourse approach, which allows us to study retirement as a transition set inside a lifelong process. In this paper, I assess how working life courses are related to changes in subjective wellbeing before and after retirement, using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and concentrating on women. Firstly, I conduct sequence analysis and cluster analysis to identify groups of typical working lifecourses from ages 20 to 50. Secondly, regression models estimate how retirement transition is associated with changes in life satisfaction, according to the different working trajectories. The results show that some of the trajectories, constituted of discontinuity or part-time periods, exhibit a continuous increase in life satisfaction, passing from employment (or unemployment) to retirement. For other trajectories, such as the full-time one, retirement seems not to have implications for subjective wellbeing.

Exploring Women's Retirement Literature through Bibliometric Analysis Using VOSviewer

“…Above all, the lack of economic understanding, risk tolerance, time preferences, confidence and saving behaviour all play a role in the inadequate individual retirement preparation (e.g., Hanna et al, 2011;Tanaka et al, 2010;Van Rooij et al, 2011). The issues of wellbeing and health are also addressed within the current trends (e.g., Giusta & Longhi, 2021;Prattley & Chandola, 2021;Tambellini, 2021;Cahill et al, 2021;Gruszczyńska et al, 2020;Zang, 2020). This might be observable due to the improvements in living standards in the current era.…”

Perception of Financial Well-Being of the Elderly and the Role of Propensity to Indebtedness and Financial Preparation for Retirement

“…Also, according to UN data (2019), population ageing will become the most significant social transformation of the century, as the number of people aged 60 and over, on a global scale, is expected to double by 2050 and then for the first time in history, there will be more elderly people than those under 15 years of age (UN, 2002). In this scenario, the elderly have been the subject of public policies not only for their significant proportion (Barbarella et al, 2022;Issac et al, 2021), but also for the economic change caused by the advent of retirement in the household finance (Tambellini, 2021).…”

“…In this context, a large part of the income that will be available in retirement is related to social security, especially in developing countries, where the family budget depends, for several families, on the benefit received by this elderly person (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2007;Melo et al, 2017). Thus, social security becomes the only financial protection of the individual and is responsible for supporting them in old age, illness and unemployment (Tambellini, 2021).…”

Being an academic retiree: a qualitative, follow-up study of women academics in the Republic of Ireland

“…Retirement has been conceptualised as a complex process that can involve a diversity of experiences and trajectories (Vickerstaff and Cox, 2005; Kojola and Moen, 2016) through bridge employment (paid and unpaid), continued education, phased retirement and second (encore) careers (Wang and Shultz, 2010; Kojola and Moen, 2016). Two major theories often applied to retirement adjustment studies include role and continuity theory (Tambellini, 2021). Role theory views retirement as a transition involving role expansion, role redefinition and change of roles and suggests that socially and personally important roles are central to building self-identity.…”

“…Continuity theory, proposed by Atchley (1999), emphasises that continuity of life patterns over time, including multiple roles and selfidentity, contributes to individuals' adaptation to retirement (Atchley, 1999). While role theory focuses on role loss, continuity theory focuses on the maintenance of social relationships and life patterns (Tambellini, 2021), continuity theory stresses that psychological well-being is maintained through continuity of lifestyle or activities (Wang, 2007). Maintaining pre-retirement lifestyle patterns has been described as the most common pattern of adjustment in retirement (Wang, 2007).…”