Abstract
Have you ever wondered at what age you would retire? Whether there would still be any pension benefits handed out when you got old? Dream about all the things you would want to do once you no longer needed to work? This book may throw a wrench into your plans because it sheds light on work after retirement. The phenomenon of work after retirement is still comparatively new and limited in extent but it has important implications. First, it raises questions about the idea that retirement is a time of leisure when frail older people enjoy a well-deserved break from paid work. Second, it suggests that welfare states may be failing to protect older people from the need to work because pension provision is insufficient. Third, it opens the floor to debate on the rights and responsibilities of older people, and on the ethical fundaments of pension provision. Researchers agree that work after retirement will become more common over the coming decades. As a result, it is likely to be headline news and to move up the political agenda in the near future.
Paid Work Beyond Pension Age is one of the first books to examine this emerging phenomenon. It outlines the extent and characteristics of work after retirement and it ties the empirical evidence in with established theories. The self-proclaimed aim of this book is to provide precise descriptions and analyses of post-retirement work. To achieve this aim, the book proceeds in three steps. First, it presents case studies from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Italy, China and Russia. These case studies focus either on a single country or compare two countries, always using quantitative data. Only one of the chapters additionally analyzes qualitative material. The case studies profile who works after retirement and they explain the country-specific push- and pull- factors leading to post-retirement work. The book continues with several chapters on the context of post-retirement work. These chapters cover topics such as globalization, pension reforms, workplace characteristics, and culture. They are mostly literature reviews and do not explicitly focus on work after retirement. The book concludes with some chapters on the consequences of work after retirement specifically for health, well–being and freedom, and also life–course models. These latter chapters are a mixture of empirical analyses and literature reviews.
For me, the book clarified two important points in particular. First, a universally valid definition of “work after retirement” is not only impossible to find, it is also unserviceable. As is the case in most edited volumes, the chapters in this book use slightly different definitions. However, this inconsistency is in fact useful, because the authors explain why the case studies demand different perspectives. In Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom ‘work after retirement’ can best be understood as work while receiving pensions, either before or after the state pension age. In Italy this definition is useful because very early retirement is common; in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is necessary because no statutory retirement age exists. In Russia, Sweden and Germany, in contrast, ‘work after retirement’ should best be understood as work beyond the state pension age. These three countries have established state pension ages, although Russians regularly continue in their jobs despite reaching the pension age. In Sweden and China, a meaningful definition of ‘work after retirement’ would also be to work in old age, because this approach may be the only one that can capture the phenomenon at all. Swedish pensions have very high replacement rates, which virtually eliminate the need for older Swedes to work once they receive pensions, whereas Chinese pension schemes cover only a small proportion of the population, which means that the concept of retirement is of limited use there. These examples clearly show that we need to understand work after retirement as a phenomenon with multiple definitions that exist side-by-side.
The second point the book makes is that work after retirement is a privilege and a burden at the same time. Many previous studies have examined whether people work after retirement because they enjoy their jobs, or because they have insufficient resources. The case studies in this book clearly show that both mechanisms are at play simultaneously. Highly educated individuals in white collar jobs and the self-employed often work after retirement because they enjoy their jobs. In contrast, individuals with little education tend to work in physically strenuous jobs, even after reaching retirement age and despite health problems, because they depend on income from wages rather than pensions. We can, therefore, conclude that both interpretations of work after retirement are true at the same time. This janus-faced situation entails that we need a differentiated understanding of work after retirement, which is sensitive towards social inequalities.
Overall, I found the book an interesting read which presents new insights. Theses new insights are concentrated in the case studies, while the other chapters draw on existing literature to a much greater extent. Readers who are familiar with current arguments in ageing research may, therefore, want to read the case studies only, whereas readers who are new to this topic would benefit from reading the entire volume. The only big missed opportunity I see is that the book does not explicitly address questions of gender and the family. We know that the working careers of men and women differ markedly, and that social and gender inequalities intersect. Thus, as work after retirement is a question of social inequalities – as this book shows – it will also be closely related to gender inequality. Thinking one step further, if gender differences are relevant, then questions of work distribution and income redistribution within families will also be relevant. It would be worthwhile for future studies to investigate how gender influences work after retirement. All in all, I hope that many people will read this book and start to think about work after retirement, because the sooner we start to discuss this topic, the better prepared we will be when work after retirement becomes a mass phenomenon.