ویژگی های کارگری، ویژگیهای شغل، و فرصت هایی برای دوران بازنشستگی فاز جداگانه

This paper uses a telephone survey of 950 employers to examine employer-side restrictions on phased retirement. The survey not only collected information on establishment level policies, but it also asked questions about a specific worker's opportunity for phased retirement. The paper uses these data to first establish that employers are selective when offering opportunities for phased retirement. It then examines what worker and job characteristics are particularly important in the selection process.

Phased retirement is often seen as a way to encourage continued labor force participation by the baby boom generation.1 The basic idea of phased (or gradual) retirement is that a worker remains with his or her employer while gradually reducing work hours and effort. Some argue that this could not only provide a more satisfying path to full retirement, but could also preserve specific human capital and thereby enhance productivity. In light of such potential benefits, it is rather surprising that phased retirement is so rare. Studies from the 1980s find that for a cohort of retirees, less than 10% took phased retirement; most retirements took the form of moving from full-time work to full-time withdrawal from the labor force.2 More recent data provides no evidence of a substantive increase in such numbers.3 Since older employees often express an interest in phased retirement,4 one explanation for its scarcity focuses on employers. Perhaps employers simply do not permit workers to take phased retirement. That explanation has now been questioned by at least two recent surveys of employers; William M. Mercer, Inc, 2001 and Hutchens, 2003 find that while formal phased retirement policies are rare, most employers can and do negotiate hours reductions by older workers on an informal basis. But perhaps such findings do not go far enough. When employers say that they would permit some form of informal phased retirement, perhaps what they are really saying is that phased retirement is an option for a select group of high performing hard-to-replace older employees. By this argument, since only a few workers fall into this select group, most older employees do not, in fact, have an opportunity for phased retirement. This paper uses unique data on older white collar workers to investigate whether, in fact, employers are selective in granting opportunities for phased retirement. The data come from a representative sample of 950 establishments. Thanks to a grant from the Sloan Foundation, the University of Massachusetts Center for Survey Research conducted telephone interviews with employers on the topic of phased retirement by white collar workers. Hutchens and Grace-Martin (2006) use these data to analyze why establishments differ in their policies toward phased retirement. Although this paper uses the same survey, it exploits a different and unique set of questions on an individual worker. The paper's contribution to the literature lies in both describing a survey methodology for obtaining information on an individual worker from an employer, and in analyzing those data with multivariate methods. The results indicate what types of workers have especially good (or bad) opportunities for phased retirement. The next section discusses the rationale for the survey, describes the survey questions that focus on phased retirement, and discusses theoretical explanations. Section 2 presents the data, Section 3 discusses missing data and multiple imputation, and Section 4 analyzes the data using ordered probit models. The results indicate that employers are, in fact, selective in offering opportunities for phased retirement, and that employee characteristics—including age and performance—influence the likelihood of selection.

This paper examines the extent to which employers are selective in providing opportunities for phased retirement. Previous work establishes that employers are often open to an informal arrangement whereby an older white collar worker can move from full-time employment to part-time. The question addressed in this paper is whether employers are chiefly open to phased retirement for select employees. The evidence presented here strongly indicates that some older white collar workers are, indeed, particularly likely to have a good opportunity for phased retirement, and that personal characteristics matter. This is true in simple cross-tabulations as well as in multivariate models that hold job and establishment characteristics constant. In particular, as age increases so do opportunities for phased retirement. Moreover, employers are more likely to permit phased retirement by people who are high performers in the sense that they require little supervision and make an extra effort to get the job done. The evidence is less clear about the importance of job characteristics. Some job characteristics do, in fact, matter. The models yield the very plausible result that if there are regular part-time workers in the selected worker's job title, then there are greater opportunities for phased retirement. This result is robust over a broad range of models. There is also evidence that workers in jobs that involve employer training are more likely to have opportunities for phased retirement. However, for several other job characteristics examined here, conclusions are simply not possible. Job characteristics are correlated with establishment characteristics. When characteristics of the establishment are entered in the model, coefficients on job characteristics often become statistically insignificant. It is interesting to think about these results in terms of using household or individual level survey data to estimate labor supply models of an individual's phased retirement decision. The evidence strongly indicates that an individual's opportunities for phased retirement depend not only on the kinds of variables obtained through household or individual level surveys (such as wages, demographic characteristics, or occupation), but also on characteristics of the individual's employer (such as existence of part-time jobs within the individual's job title), as well as aspects of the individual's work performance (such as whether the individual requires little supervision). A labor supply model of the phased retirement decision would ideally incorporate such determinants of opportunity. It is also interesting to think about these results in terms of economic incentives. Are employers perhaps using phased retirement as a way to encourage greater work effort by older full-timers? In that regard, Japan provides an interesting case. Japanese employers sometimes provide work opportunities for employees who reach the organization's mandatory retirement age (Rebick, 1995). These post-career jobs involve reduced hours with the current employer or an affiliate of the current employer. Since Japanese employers are often selective about who has an opportunity for such jobs, with high performing employees having greater opportunities, this practice has been viewed as an incentive device. The present paper finds a similar phenomenon in the U.S; phased retirement is offered selectively, with high performing employees having greater opportunities. Are some of these U.S. employers using phased retirement as an incentive to encourage greater work effort? Finally, it is interesting to think about these results in terms of formal versus informal phased retirement plans. We know that formal plans are rare. That may be in part due to employers thinking that a formal written policy could raise legal issues under ERISA or ADEA. It could also be in part due to employers wanting to be selective about who has an opportunity for phased retirement. It may be easier to be selective when there is no document that could be interpreted as granting workers a “right” to phased retirement.