Current and future workers need to work much longer than in previous decades to deal with the social and financial challenges imposed by an ageing population. In a rapidly evolving retirement landscape, we study the transition from work to retirement. We study how older adults make decisions on retirement and how the transition into retirement impacts life and wellbeing after retirement. In addition to studying the retirement process from the perspectives of employees, we are also interested in how employers deal with the retirement of employees and how their organization adapts to an extension of workers’ careers. To answer our research questions, we regularly collect data among workers and employers: the NIDI Pension Panel Survey (conducted in 2015 and 2018 in the Netherlands collected information from over 6.500 older workers, their spouses, and their employers. We use these data (among other sources) to conduct interdisciplinary research that combines insights from labor economics, sociology, psychology, and health sciences.
What are we working on?
In our projects, we address a wide range of issues related to older workers’ transition from work to retirement. In the projects Ageing Workers in an Ageing Society and Delaying Retirement we examine how older workers of pre-retirement age strive to remain productive at work and how their employers strive to be supportive while dealing with the challenges caused by extended working lives. In other projects, we zoom in on older workers’ and retirees experiences around retirement and the consequences that working after retirement has for well-being. Much of our work aims to inspire and inform policy makers and organizations by studying how employees and employers react to changes in pension systems, how employers may improve the employability of older workers through investments in human capital, and how the introduction of a flexible pension age may affect the transition from work to retirement. Finally, in The Life Course of the Young in the 21st Century, we examine how young people from different social backgrounds shape their life course.
