Retirement timing in Italy: rising age and the advantages of a stable working career

Abstract

This article looks at how retirement timing is changing in Italy. A first aim is descriptive and it is to identify recent trends in retirement age, following the pension reform. Then the focus is on factors which may favour or hinder the extension of the working career of older workers. They are studied by looking at the reasons for retirement, introducing the distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement, and some predictors of retirement. Some of them relate to the work history of individuals, in particular the stability/instability of careers due to episodes of unemployment. The level of education and gender, two variables that may affect the employability of older workers, have also been considered. The study is based on a longitudinal analysis (Kaplan–Meier survival estimates of transition to retirement and binomial logit discrete-time model for the analysis of retirement predictors) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Job Episodes Panel data. They refer to a sample of 1,999 individuals born between 1911 and 1959. Although the various pension reforms initiated in Italy in the 1990s have not yet been fully implemented, retirement age is rising, even in the case of involuntary retirement. Regarding work history, the advantages of a working career with a small number of unemployment episodes emerge from the study.

Does Machine Learning Offer Added Value Vis-à-Vis Traditional Statistics? An Exploratory Study on Retirement Decisions Using Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)

“…The role of grandchildren, as explored by Van Bavel and De Winter [81], is also confirmed: grandchildren are likely to give workers a motivation to retire. With regard to education, our findings differ from the existing literature, which underlines its importance [66,77,82]; conversely, we found no significant influence of the variable when carrying out simulations.…”

“…Bockermann and Ilmakunnas [76] used probit models to study the impact of working conditions on early retirement. Trentini [77] used logit regressions to analyze SHARE data, and concluded that low levels of education and a stable career drive retirement patterns in Italy; in addition, he identified health as a potential factor driving involuntary retirement. SHARE data and event history analysis were used by Macken et al to conclude that education plays a role in explaining involuntary labor market exit across Europe [78].…”

Labour market trajectories and unemployment of older workers in Europe after the Great Recession

“…Disadvantages or advantages can accumulate over time (Bennett & Möhring, 2014;O'Rand, 1996). TRENTINI Unemployment may affect the type of retirement (voluntary or involuntary) and retirement timing (early, on time, later) (Dingemans et al, 2017;Fisher et al, 2016;Hofäcker et al, 2015;Stiemke & Hess, 2022;Trentini, 2021).…”

“…Late‐career discontinuity resulting from unemployment has received limited attention in recent studies on retirement timing determinants (Blossfeld et al., 2011; Trentini, 2021).…”

Increasing retirement ages in Denmark: Do changes in gender, education, employment status and health matter?

“…Second, changes in retirement behaviour (driven e.g. by legislative changes) may not be evenly distributed across socio-economic, demographic, educational and occupational groups (Coile et al 2018 ; Radl 2013 ; Trentini 2020 ). For example, increases in retirement ages have mainly taken place among the highly educated (OECD 2017a ; Rutledge 2018 ) and among people with high occupational status (Leinonen et al 2020 ; Qvist 2020 ), and have in general been more pronounced for women than for men (OECD.Stat 2021 ).…”