Involuntary retirement, bridge employment, and satisfaction with life: A longitudinal investigation

• Date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Kène Henkens,Ellen Dingemans
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1914

Involuntary retirement, bridge employment, and

satisfaction with life: A longitudinal investigation

ELLEN DINGEMANS

1

*AND KÈNE HENKENS

1,2

1

Work and Retirement Department, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague, The Netherlands

2

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Summary The increased popularity of bridge employment has raised questions about its consequences for well-being in

late adult life. This research explored the consequences of bridge employment for the level of life satisfaction

of older adults during the retirement transition period. Changes in life satisfaction were considered to be a

function of the different intentions and motives for taking bridge jobs. Furthermore, the impact of bridge

employment was empirically examined conditional on the voluntariness of the exit from the career job. Panel

data on Dutch retirees (N= 1248) were investigated using conditional change models. The results demonstrate

that older adults willing to prolong their work careers but unable to find bridge jobs reported lower levels of

life satisfaction compared with full retirees not considering bridge employment. In addition, participation in

bridge employment for financial motives was associated with decreases in life satisfaction compared with

postretirement working based on intrinsic motives. Moreover, compared with voluntary retirement, involun-

tary retirement was detrimental to life satisfaction, but participation in a bridge job was found to mitigate this

negative shock. These findings contribute to the understanding of the consequences of various postretirement

employment trajectories for older individuals. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: satisfaction with life; involuntary retirement; bridge employment

Traditionally, retirement is considered to be an abrupt and complete discontinuation of paid employment in later life.

Today, however, retirement can be characterized as a process that can take multiple forms (Beehr & Bennett, 2007)

and may cover a substantial period of time, during which people must make a number of decisions about their par-

ticipation in the labor force. Older workers may decide to retire early using appealing retirement arrangements or to

keep working in the career job until the official public pension age. However, after deciding to retire from their

careers, many people choose to remain in some type of paid employment, which is often referred to in the literature

as “bridge employment”(Feldman, 1994). The decisions regarding the exit from the career job and engagement in

bridge employment can be the result of careful planning, but they can also be the result of external organizational

and labor market forces. The increasing variety of retirement trajectories may have profound implications for late-life

outcomes, such as retirement adjustment, health outcomes, and life satisfaction (see Van Solinge, 2013, for an over-

view). Two aspectsof the retirement transition are deemed tobe particularly important to explain changesin well-being

in late adult life: (i) how people experience their labor force exits (e.g., forced or voluntary) and (ii) whether retirees

prolong their activeworking lives in bridge jobs. The presentstudy determines the consequences ofinvoluntary retire-

ment and involvement in bridge employment on the postretirement life satisfaction of older adults.

The consequences of retirement on life satisfaction have been inconsistently examined in the literature. For

instance, previous empirical research has found a significant impact of retirement in both positive and negative

directions, while other studies have failed to find any effect at all (Van Solinge, 2013). Involuntary departure from

a career job is a key element to understanding lower levels of postretirement well-being (Bender, 2012; Calvo,

Haverstick, & Sass, 2009; Van Solinge & Henkens, 2008). Although retirement is often thought of as a voluntary

*Correspondence to: Ellen Dingemans, Work and Retirement Department, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), The

Hague, The Netherlands. E-mail: dingemans@nidi.nl

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 07 November 2012

Revised 04 November 2013, Accepted 05 November 2013

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 575–591 (2014)

Published online 17 December 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1914

Research Article

transition, approximately 20–30 percent of older workers actually perceive retirement as forced and mainly a result

of health-related issues or organizational restrictions (Hershey & Henkens, 2013; Szinovacz & Davey, 2005; Van

Solinge & Henkens, 2007).

However, the perception of involuntary retirement does not necessarily imply no-choice retirement. Any retire-

ment decision also depends on older workers’intentions to exit the labor force as well as the social context in which

this movement will take place (Szinovacz & Davey, 2005; Van Solinge & Henkens, 2007). For example, older

adults may perceive their retirement as forced when they retire off time (i.e., earlier or later; Wang, 2007) according

to socially acceptable standards or when they experience a lack of support for retirement from relevant others (e.g.,

their spouse; Van Solinge & Henkens, 2007). Hence, involuntary exits from the labor force may prevent older adults

from having enough time to anticipate the potential changes caused by the retirement transition, such as a drop in

income or changes in social relationships.

Less is known in the literature about the consequences of reentry into the labor market after retirement in the form

of bridge jobs. This dearth in the body of knowledge is remarkable because approximately half of US retirees

participate in a bridge job after ending their careers (Cahill, Giandrea, & Quinn, 2005). Previous empirical research

has rather focused on the determinants of bridge employment (e.g., Cahill et al., 2005; Gobeski & Beehr, 2009; Kim

& Feldman, 2000; Wang, Zhan, Liu, & Shultz, 2008; Weckerle & Shultz, 1999). Among the few studies that have

investigated the consequences of bridge employment, the qualitative research of Ulrich (2003) found that participa-

tion in a bridge job made retirees feel better about themselves. Furthermore, based on quantitative longitudinal

research, Wang (2007) showed that bridge employees are better able to maintain their preretirement levels of

well-being during the retirement transition compared with retirees without bridge jobs. It remains unclear, however,

whether participation in a bridge job can offset the negative changes in well-being caused by involuntary departure

from a career job. Moreover, because people might have different motives for employment in a bridge job, which

may lead to different consequences on postretirement life satisfaction, understanding these differences may help

refine the conceptualization of bridge employment.

This study contributes to the literature on retirement in three ways. First, it is among only a handful of inves-

tigations to link a person’s postretirement work patterns to his or her life satisfaction (Kim & Feldman, 2000;

Wang, 2007). Beyond the impact of having a bridge job after retirement, we examine how the inability to find

abridgejobinfluences postretirement life satisfaction. In addition, the paper enhances our understanding of

how different motives for bridge employment influence life satisfaction. For instance, feeling forced to participate

in bridge employment for financial motives could be expected to contribute negatively to life satisfaction, while

intrinsic motives, such as the enjoyment of work, might be beneficial for maintaining preretirement levels

of life satisfaction.

Second, this study is the first to examine the impact of bridge employment on how older adults evaluate their lives

conditional on their experiences of the retirement process. Specifically, we posit that the negative impact of invol-

untary retirement on life satisfaction can be mitigated by engaging in bridge employment. As such, a dynamic

approach that considers both labor force exit and reentry is assumed to be a prerequisite to a complete understanding

of the retirement–satisfaction nexus. Moreover, we examine life satisfaction among those who experience different

types of involuntary exits compared with individuals who choose to leave the workforce voluntarily.

Third, the present study uses panel data to investigate life satisfaction over the retirement transition period. Of the

previous literature on the consequences of retirement, only a few studies have followed the retirement paths of older

adults over time (e.g., Pinquart & Schindler, 2007; Wang, 2007), rather than making cross-sectional comparisons

between workers and retirees. The proposed panel design thus enables us to control for preretirement levels of life

satisfaction and account for the changes in resources faced by retirees. In particular, we followed the suggestion of

Kim and Moen (2002), who emphasized “the importance of examining various resources and contexts surrounding

retirement transitions (…) to understand the dynamics of the retirement transition and its relationship with psycho-

logical well-being”(p. 212).

The three-wave panel dataset on which we base our research was collected in the Netherlands between 2001 and

2011. A large proportion of the current population of older adults in the Netherlands has benefited from various early

576 E. DINGEMANS AND K. HENKENS

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 575–591 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/job