Bridge jobs: A comparison across cohorts

Michael D. Giandrea, Kevin E. Cahill, Joseph F. Quinn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Are today's retirees following in the footsteps of their older peers with respect to gradual retirement? Recent evidence from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) suggests that most older Americans with full-time career jobs late in life moved to other jobs prior to complete labor force withdrawal. The authors explored the retirement patterns of two cohorts of individuals from the HRS. One group (the war babies) was born between 1942 and 1947 and therefore aged 59 to 64 years at the time of their fifth biennial HRS interviews in 2006. The others (the original HRS respondents) were aged 59 to 64 in 2000 and therefore 6 years older. The war babies have followed the gradual-retirement trends of their predecessors. Traditional one-step retirement appears to be fading as the effects of changes in the retirement environment continue to unfold.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)549-576
Number of pages28
JournalResearch on Aging
Volume31
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Bridge jobs
  • Economics of aging
  • Gradual retirement
  • Retirement patterns

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Health(social science)
  • Social Psychology
  • Geriatrics and Gerontology

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