Recent trends in US working life expectancy at age 50 by gender, education, and race/ethnicity and the impact of the Great Recession

Abstract

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A lost generation? The financial crisis and the length of working life in Spain

“…For males, the results did not diverge substantially, which implies that coverage of the male population in the social security register is more complete than coverage of females. To take this discrepancy into account, we applied a simplified variant of the correction approach outlined by Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) to the transition probabilities for females (for technical details, see appendix A). Moreover, we also applied the approach of Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) to the survival probabilities of both males and females.…”

“…To take this discrepancy into account, we applied a simplified variant of the correction approach outlined by Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) to the transition probabilities for females (for technical details, see appendix A). Moreover, we also applied the approach of Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) to the survival probabilities of both males and females. After the corrections were applied, the results for both males and females differed only marginally from the benchmark.…”

“…For 2012/2013, WLE at age 50 was 8.7 years for employed males and 7.9 years for employed females. For WLE at age 50, Leinonen et al (2016) reported values of 9.1 years for males and 10.0 years for females in Finland in 2012, while Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) reported values of 12.7 years for males and 11.0 years for females in the US in 2008-2011. The differences found between Spain and the US can be explained by evidence showing that retirement in the US is not as clear-cut as it is in many European countries; i.e., it is relatively common for older Americans to return to employment after a period of retirement (e.g.…”

“…Most of the existing studies on length of working life have focused on the United States (Dudel and Myrskylä, 2016;Skoog and Ciecka, 2010;Millimet et al, 2010Millimet et al, , 2003Hayward and Grady, 1990;Smith, 1986), although studies on the issue have also been conducted for Finland (Leinonen et al, 2016;Nurminen et al, 2005), the United Kingdom (Haberman and Bloomfield, 1990;Butt et al, 2008), the Netherlands (Liefbroer and Henkens, 1999), and Denmark (Hoem, 1977). For Finland in 2006, Nurminen et al (2005 estimated working life expectancy at age 16 at 29.7 years for females and 31.4 years for males; meaning that 16-year-old Finnish females (males) could expect to spend 29.7 years (31.4 years) in employment.…”

“…Findings for the UK by Butt et al (2008) generally showed a lower working life expectancy than in Finland, while most estimates for the US have been higher. For example, Dudel and Myrskylä (2016) estimated that 50-year-olds in the US in 2008-2011 had a working life expectancy of 12.7 years for males and 11.0 years for females, with strong educational gradients (see also Skoog and Ciecka, 2010;Millimet et al, 2003).…”