Do good working conditions make you work longer? Analyzing retirement decisions using linked survey and register data

Abstract

We analyzed the role of adverse working conditions and new management practices in the determination of employees’ retirement behavior. The combined data contain both comprehensive information on perceived job disamenities, job satisfaction, and intentions to retire from two nationally representative cross-sectional surveys and information on employees’ actual retirement decisions from longitudinal register data that can be linked to the surveys. Using a trivariate ordered probit model, we find that job dissatisfaction arising from adverse working conditions is significantly related to intentions to retire and that this, in turn, is related to actual retirement during an extensive follow-up period.