Structural Determinants of Workforce Participation after Retirement in Poland

AbstractIn this paper, we aim to analyse selected structural determinants of workforce participation after retirement in Poland. Bystructural determinants we mean characteristics of one ’s socio-economic position that (a) result from the interplay of social conditions (mechanisms of power, differentiated access to resources) and individual agency, and (b) restrict or facilitate individuals’ choices. We conceptualiseworkforce participation as engaging in either part- or full-time paid employment despite receiving the old-age pension. Our general hypothesis is that working in older age is not only a matter of motivation or psychological traits but also a complex interplay of structural characteristics, accumulated by individuals during their life course. In the paper, we test a number of hypotheses about the role of specific components of socio-economic status (SES), i.e. occupational prestige, education, and wealth, for workforce participation among retirees. We argue that, in case of retirees, the prestige of the last job before retirement is a more reliable measure of the social position than education. Hence, we conduct a more detailed analysis of the role of occupational prestige for the chances of being employed after retirement. The analysis was based on data gathered in the years 2013 –2014 within the sixth wave of the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN (www.polpan.org). We extracted a subsample of retirees from this dataset and used logistic regression to test the hypoth...
Source: Journal of Population Ageing - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research