Avoiding Retirement in Chile

Drawing on life-course, gender, and welfare regime theories, and relying on primary longitudinal qualitative data and primary longitudinal quantitative data, this book critically examines the generalizability of traditional age norms involving the transition to retirement, within a persistently uncertain and precarious setting.

Drawing on life-course, gender, and welfare regime theories and relying on primary longitudinal qualitative data (life- story interviews with 90 older workers) and primary longitudinal quantitative data (life-course calendar surveys among 802 older individuals), Avoiding Retirement in Chile critically examines the generalizability of traditional age norms involving the transition to retirement within a persistently uncertain and precarious setting.

Grounded in systematic empirical evidence, this study allows us to reflect on the fact that a definitive and permanent exit from any form of economic activity is increasingly viewed as a fictional scenario by most older individuals. This arises not only from highly precarious social conditions but also from a complex process involving individual agency, wherein the status of being 'retired' is progressively less voluntarily anticipated.

As such, it is of significant interest to a broad spectrum of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars across various disciplines, including social sciences, economics, humanities, gerontology, public health, and social epidemiology. Additionally, the book targets policymakers and decision-makers engaged in topics such as aging, the labor market, pension systems, social and health inequality, and life-course determinants of disparities in old age.

Autorentext

Ignacio Cabib is Interdisciplinary Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Health at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile. His main academic interests are the life-course approach, health and social inequalities in old age, cross-national studies, extended working lives, and research methods. Thanks to the support of national and international networks, over the past 15 years he has conducted an agenda that aims to understand how employment, family, and health disadvantages and advantages over the life-course impact multiple later-life inequalities across countries with different welfare regime orientations.

Inhalt

Introduction

1. Extended Working Lives: A Growing Phenomenon in Current Aging Populations

2. Research Objectives, Data and Methods

3. Adulthood Trajectories Across Different Life Domains and Diversity of Labor Force Statuses in Old Age

4. Changing Perceptions on Definitive Labor Market Exit

5. Perceptions of Retirement and Caregiving, Training, and Health Biographies

6. Retirement Perceptions in a Liberal Institutional Regime

7. Extensive Precarity and Uncertainty Tolerance Redefining the Retirement Transition

8. Policy Innovations for Extended Working Lives in Uncertain and Precarious Contexts