The Retirement Expectations of Middle-Aged Individuals

Deborah Cobb-Clark and Steve Stillman

No 540, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University

Abstract: We use the first three waves of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to examine the retirement plans of middle-aged workers (aged 45-55). Our results indicate that approximately two-thirds of men and more then half of women appear to be making standard retirement plans. At the same time, more than one in five individuals seem to have delayed their retirement planning and approximately one in ten either do not know when they expect to retire or expect to never retire. Retirement plans are closely related to current labor market position. Specifically, forming expectations about the age at which one will leave the labor market appears to be easier for workers in jobs with well defined pension benefits and standard retirement ages. Moreover, those who report that they do not know when they expect to retire do in fact appear to face greater uncertainty in their retirement planning. Those who anticipate working forever seem to do so out of concerns about the adequacy of their retirement incomes rather than out of increased job satisfaction or a heightened desire to remain employed. Finally, men alter their retirement plans in response to labor market shocks, while women are more sensitive to their own and their partners’ health changes.

Keywords: retirement; expectations; middle-aged workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J08 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP540.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Retirement Expectations of Middle-Aged Individuals (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:dpaper:540

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().