Structural Determinants of Workforce Participation after Retirement in Poland

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to analyse selected structural determinants of workforce participation after retirement in Poland. By structural determinants we mean characteristics of one’s socio-economic position that (a) result from the interplay of social conditions (mechanisms of power, differentiated access to resources) and individual agency, and (b) restrict or facilitate individuals’ choices. We conceptualise workforce participation as engaging in either part- or full-time paid employment despite receiving the old-age pension. Our general hypothesis is that working in older age is not only a matter of motivation or psychological traits but also a complex interplay of structural characteristics, accumulated by individuals during their life course. In the paper, we test a number of hypotheses about the role of specific components of socio-economic status (SES), i.e. occupational prestige, education, and wealth, for workforce participation among retirees. We argue that, in case of retirees, the prestige of the last job before retirement is a more reliable measure of the social position than education. Hence, we conduct a more detailed analysis of the role of occupational prestige for the chances of being employed after retirement. The analysis was based on data gathered in the years 2013–2014 within the sixth wave of the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN (www.polpan.org). We extracted a subsample of retirees from this dataset and used logistic regression to test the hypotheses described above. We found that both occupational prestige of the last job before retirement and educational attainments are strong predictors of being in paid work after retirement, however the impact of occupational prestige varies across the groups with the lowest and higher level of retirement pension. We also found that there are horizontal differences in the occupational structure of the chances for workforce participation after retirement and additionally found that being a farm owner increases the propensity to engage in economic activity after retirement. The paper contributes to the field of studies on the relationship between SES and workforce participation after retirement in line with the cumulative advantage/disadvantage theory and shows that resources that individuals have accumulated during the life course can determine their chances of working after retirement just as individual motivations or organisational characteristics do.

Economic activity of Polish pensioners in the light of quantitative research

“…The outcomes of this research in general support the results on socio-economic status (SES), i.e. education and wealth, for workforce participation performed on different set of microdata presented by Oleksiyenko and Życzyńska-Ciołek (2018). Our research adds to the aforementioned analysis by extension of dependent variable into different categories of work activity during retirement (regular or occasional).…”

Persistent Spinal Pain Syndrome Type 2 (PSPS-T2), a Social Pain? Advocacy for a Social Gradient of Health Approach to Chronic Pain

“…PSC was assessed from the patients' profession and coded by a sociologist according to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies nomenclature [20]. In retired and unemployed patients, their last job was used for the analysis [21].…”

What drives older adults to continue working after official retirement age?

“…Post-retirement employment may be more important for workers with low pension income in poorer European economies; retirees whose pensions are high enough to maintain their standard of living and who lack attractive labour-market opportunities, in turn, are more likely to retire fully (Madero-Cabib and Kaeser, 2016;Oleksiyenko and Życzyńska-Ciołek, 2018;Dingemans and Henkens, 2019). In the UK, for example, about two-fifths of employees over 65 are concentrated in low-skill, low-pay occupations due to hiring strategies (Lain, 2012).…”

“…Whether measured in occupational status or in education, relatively advantageous careers and better education predict a higher likelihood of unretirement (Pettersson, 2014;Congdon-Hohman, 2018) or post-retirement employment more generally. Relatively advantageous careers (professional career, managerial last job before retirement, high-level or supervisory job, prestigious occupations, and so on) and better education predict a higher likelihood of prolonging employment until official retirement age and beyond; conversely, non-professional blue-collar jobs and elementary occupations predict a lower likelihood of employment beyond retirement (Dingemans et al, 2016;Hokema and Scherger, 2016;Wahrendorf et al, 2017;Oleksiyenko and Życzyńska-Ciołek, 2018;Anxo et al, 2019;Zitikytė, 2019). Individuals employed before retirement in less-advantageous jobspositions that do not include autonomy and/or offer less control of conditions and time, low prestige and high stressare more likely to retire fully (Wang et al, 2008;Pengcharoen and Shultz, 2010;Virtanen et al, 2014;Oleksiyenko and Życzyńska-Ciołek, 2018).…”