This project focuses on the main contexts of extending working lives; the organizational context, the couple context, and the changing pension context (WTP). Households and organizations can encourage late career employment, leading to later ages at retirement but they can also stimulate the exit from the workforce, reducing the age at retirement. In this project, we first argue that an understanding of the potential of the aging workforce requires linking older adults with their organizational environment. Employers’ decisions, human resources systems, socio-cultural norms, organizational climate, and work conditions – all these and other organizational elements can help or hinder older workers’ chances of remaining engaged, motivated, and able to work longer.

The second social context of the retirement process comes from decision-making processes in older couples and from household resources and constraints. How do spouses influence each other’s retirement decisions, to what extent do people adapt to the retirement choices of their partner, and how do household-level resources and constraints facilitate or hinder retirement? These two forces operate in a changing institutional context. The current pension reform may make pensions more uncertain, which may affect retirement decisions, for example by stimulating post-retirement work. Furthermore, trust in pension providers may affect the use of choice options when people retire. Options such as high/low arrangements may facilitate synchronization of retirement among couples, but using this option might also be induced by low levels of trust in one’s pension provider. The project will analyze panel survey data on 4,000 older workers and their spouses from 2015-2023.