Working beyond retirement in Europe: An investigation of individual and societal determinants using SHARE

One of the solutions that could be used to resource the needs of an aging population is the encouragement of individuals to extend their working lives beyond retirement, often referred to as ‘bridge’ employment. Although previous studies provide important insights on the relationship between individual attributes and bridge employment, there is scant research on the extent to which differences across countries and between genders may exist and how these might be explained by economic and societal differences in the pension context. Therefore, we investigate the determinants of participation in bridge employment among male and female retirees in 16 European countries. Multilevel models are estimated based on data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe project. We found that where there is high expenditure on pensions there is a lower likelihood of retirees, particularly women, participating in bridge jobs, while strong norms that support working past retirement are positively associated with bridge employment.