Skip to content
Menu
WorkLife
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
WorkLife

Retiring early: the links with childhood

Posted on June 14, 2017June 14, 2017 by Chris Garrington

When we think of why someone might retire early, our minds are unlikely to make the leap to their childhood for the answer. But a group of researchers interested in what sorts of things affect our later working lives, believe that early retirement may indeed have some of its roots in our younger years. The research sheds new and important light on worldwide efforts to plug pensions gaps and get more people working longer. Hanno Hoven from the University of Dusseldorf outlines why he and colleagues from the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at UCL think early retirement can be traced right back to having had a tougher childhood. He goes on to explain what the findings might mean for policy in this area.

All sorts of things are likely to influence the point at which older people stop working. External factors like tax incentives to stay in work or changes to when we can claim our State Pension play a role. Then there are our working conditions, what’s going on with our health and how our personal circumstances change as we get older.

A substantial body of research has shown in recent years that people whose socioeconomic circumstances are poor are more likely to retire early than their better off peers. But in our research, we wanted to see if retiring early can additionally be traced back to earlier stages of the life course, more specifically, to having had a tougher life as a child or during mid adulthood.

In addition we wanted to dig a bit deeper into older people’s working lives, by giving a clearer and more detailed picture that describes entire patterns of employment trajectories (and not retirement timing only). To do this, we took into account the employment history between 50 and 70, including details on type of job people did, whether they worked full- or part-time or whether they were self-employed.

We used information collected by the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has carried out interviews with more than 28,000 older people from 14 different countries. For our research, we focused on 5,857 men and women from the survey who wereaged 70 or over and who had provided details of their previous working and personal lives.

Work and retirement

We created clusters of their work and employment histories, and you can see in the table below the proportion of men and women in each cluster. On this basis we could link these clusters or types of employment histories to earlier adversity for both men and women.

Looking at types of employment histories between the ages of 50 and 70, we could see that men were more likely than women working in full-time employment or self-employed.. Women worked more likely in a part-time job or looked after home or family during those years.

Adversity in childhood

After modelling the effect of early life information and taking a range of background factors into account (e.g., among others, health conditions prior and during working life in mid adulthood), we were able to see that men who had experienced adversity in childhood were 5 percentage points more likely to have retired early (around age 55) from full-time employment, but they were less likely self-employed in late life. The same was true of men who experienced adversity in adulthood, although it is important to note that the effects were independent of each other.

Women who had suffered adversity in childhood were also less likely to be self-employed and retire later on. However, it was not related to early (around age 55) retirement from a full-time job. Women who faced adversity in adult life were more likely to work part-time or to look after the home/family than their peers who suffered no adversity during that period. This was not the case for childhood adversity.

Some other interesting things emerged from the research, which we believe provides a more comprehensive picture than has been provided before.

One very notable point was that early retirement was more closely associated with being in full-time employment rather than being self-employed. This could be because employed people have more restricted opportunities to work for longer (even if they want to) compared with their self-employed counterparts who have more freedom in deciding when to retire.

Food for thought

For those, including the Government’s Business Champion for Older Workers, who want to see thousands more older workers in British companies by 2022, this will be food for thought. More flexible retirement arrangements are likely to be necessary for employed workers who want to work longer, for example, through retirement schemes that allow a reduction of working time before leaving the labour market. This argument is further supported by the fact that such a cluster (where employed people reduced their working hours before retiring) was not found in our research.

Interesting differences emerged between men and women when it came to their employment histories and the way in which childhood adversity was linked to them. Whilst men were more likely to follow a path of full-time employment into retirement, women were more likely to have been continuously looking after home or family (without retirement) or have worked part-time.

When we factored in childhood adversity in the women’s lives, there was a close link with discontinuous employment in later life. This link was stronger for women than for men. Other research has suggested that traditional gender roles make it harder for women to gain a foothold in the labour market, a disadvantage that any adversity in childhood is likely to compound.

Looking across the lifecourse in this way sheds considerable new and important light on the timing of retirement, and offers some pointers for policymakers looking to increase the numbers of older workers. One specific implication is that certain measures are likely to work better for different age groups and should address different stages of the lifecourse.

There has been a great deal of focus on pension age and working conditions for older people. However, our research suggests that our childhood circumstances are also important and that policies to tackle childhood poverty and create good stable jobs for young people may also have a key role to play over time.

Early Adversity and Late Life Employment History—A Sequence Analysis Based on SHARE is research by Hanno Hoven, Nico Dragano, David Blane and Morten Wahrendorf and is published in Work, Aging and Retirement.

 

Related

Ageing Career Childhood Employment Family Flexible working Health Mental health Pension Retirement State Pension Age Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe Unemployment Well-being Work
Journal article

Search

  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives
  • Were women’s domestic burdens eased by Covid-19 lockdowns? And will the pandemic have a lasting effect on household work-sharing?

Follow our blog

Enter email

Topics

1946 Birth Cohort 1958 Birth Cohort Ageing Alcohol BMI Body fat British Household Panel Survey Career Census Childcare Cholesterol C Reactive Protein Depression Diabetes Disability Employment English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Family Fathers Fibrinogen Flexible working Gender Health Heart Disease Inflammation Inflammatory markers Jobseekers Mental health Mothers Occupational health ONS Longitudinal Study Pension Recession Retirement Sickness Smoking State Pension Age Stress Teen Parent UKHLS Understanding Society Unemployment Well-being Whitehall Study Work

Share

Share on print
Print
Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on google
Google
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
Linkedin
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives
  • Were women’s domestic burdens eased by Covid-19 lockdowns? And will the pandemic have a lasting effect on household work-sharing?
June 2017
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May   Jul »

Archives

  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • July 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • January 2021
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016

Latest posts

  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives
  • Were women’s domestic burdens eased by Covid-19 lockdowns? And will the pandemic have a lasting effect on household work-sharing?

Tags

1946 Birth Cohort 1958 Birth Cohort Ageing Alcohol BMI Body fat British Household Panel Survey Career Census Childcare Cholesterol C Reactive Protein Depression Diabetes Disability Employment English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Family Fathers Fibrinogen Flexible working Gender Health Heart Disease Inflammation Inflammatory markers Jobseekers Mental health Mothers Occupational health ONS Longitudinal Study Pension Recession Retirement Sickness Smoking State Pension Age Stress Teen Parent UKHLS Understanding Society Unemployment Well-being Whitehall Study Work
©2023 WorkLife | Powered by WordPress & Superb Themes