Project Summary
Working with a committee of colleagues from the U.S. and abroad, Jacquelyn James has contributed to a study that reviewed what is known about the aging workforce in the U.S, identified gaps in current knowledge and data infrastructure, and made recommendations for future research and data collection efforts.聽 The study focused on the individual-level human capital and demographic characteristics associated with decisions to continue working at older ages; and on the social and structural factors, including workplace policies and conditions, that inhibit or enable employment among older workers.
Key Findings
- Work and retirement decisions are the result of the interrelated effects of individual preferences for work, expectations about the future, and constraints on work behaviors within the larger contexts of social and economic change.
- But these individual preferences, expectations, and constraints operate within complex systems of social and economic inequality that develop throughout the life course, and thus they may be specific to the historical circumstances in which individuals enter their adulthood and, later, their retirement ages.
- We know too little about the well-being of older workers and of those who are not working but may wish to do so under certain conditions, as well as of those who are working despite a preference to retire.
- Much of what we know about the later work course comes from studies of earlier cohorts, people who confronted very different demographic, technological, social, and economic forces, as well as from different private-sector and public-policy regimes.
- The research agenda proposed in this report is a roadmap to begin exploration of contemporary鈥攁nd changing鈥攅xperiences of work and retirement.