After Lunch Webinar: Mark Visser – Mustafa Firat – The interplay of work-family trajectories and welfare provisions in (in)voluntary retirement: A cross-national comparison of 28 European countries

This study takes a comparative life course perspective on retirement voluntariness across Europe. It examines the relationship between work-family trajectories before the age of 50 and retirement voluntariness and whether this relationship is moderated by the generosity of sickness and unemployment benefits in a country. Using individual life history data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), along with country data from the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Project that is matched to the work-family trajectories, multilevel analysis is performed. The results indicate that people who deviate from a conventional life course in either the work or family domain, including part-time employment, non-employment, self-employment, childlessness and divorce, are less likely to retire voluntary and more likely to do so involuntary. Sickness benefits generosity does not moderate the relationship between work-family trajectories and retirement voluntariness, yet unemployment benefits generosity does. With higher levels of unemployment benefits generosity, certain groups, such as part-time workers, show a reduced likelihood of involuntary retirement. However, other groups, like the non-employed and the self-employed, have a reduced likelihood to retire voluntarily, likely because they are not covered or well-represented in unemployment insurances. These findings broaden our understanding of social inequality in retirement voluntariness, suggesting that disadvantages accumulate over the life course and restrict people’s agency in navigating the retirement transition. They also suggest that welfare provisions play different roles in different life courses when it comes to retirement voluntariness.