Introduction
Due to ageing populations, governments in European countries are striving to keep older workers longer in the workforce (Rechel et al.
2013). In fact, according to recent statistics from the European Union, the share of older workers in the workforce has increased during the past 15 years in most European countries. However, despite different reforms of the pensions systems, the number of workers above 65 years of age is still rather low. In 2018, less than 2% of the European population aged 65–69 years were in paid work (Eurostat
2019). To legislate a higher statutory retirement age without other measures might not be a feasible way. In parallel, the sustainability of the work environment should be addressed in order to make it possible and attractive for older workers to work longer. Earlier studies examining the influence of psychosocial working conditions on timing of retirement have been more concerned with early retirement (voluntary or due to disability) rather than late or postponed retirements (cf. Browne et al.
2019). In addition, it is unknown whether the importance of certain psychosocial working conditions may change with age. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether psychosocial working conditions contribute to prolonged working lives among those aged 59 years and above. In particular, whether the importance of psychosocial working conditions increased with age.
The Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) theory (Bakker et al.
2003; Demerouti et al.
2001) is useful to explain a potential link between work environment and prolonged working life. According to the JD–R theory, there are two types of psychosocial working conditions: (1) job demands—characteristics of the job that require persistent effort (e.g. working fast and hard) and thus are associated with costs—and (2) job resources—characteristics of the job that facilitate management of job demands or goal achievements, or embrace personal growth and development (e.g. autonomy and support) (Bakker et al.
2003). Job demands and job resources affect work-related outcomes through two different processes (Bakker et al.
2005).
The health impairment process postulates that high job demands predict exhaustion (Bakker et al.
2014). This resembles the ‘push’ mechanisms, that is, factors that push older workers out of the labour market, such as high job demands exceeding one’s physical and mental capacity, which may make it too strenuous for some individuals to continue working when ageing (Andersen and Sundstrup
2019).
The motivational process, on the other hand, postulates that high job resources predict work engagement (Bakker et al.
2014). This resembles ‘stay’ (also called ‘pull’) mechanisms, that is, factors that attract older workers to voluntarily continue working (Andersen and Sundstrup
2019). According to the JD–R theory, job resources may also buffer the impact of high job demands on exhaustion (Bakker et al.
2014). Here especially job strain (cf. DCM model by Karasek
1979; Karasek and Theorell
1990), defined by combinations of (quantitative) psychological demands and job control (i.e. passive, low-strain, active, or high-strain jobs), has frequently been studied in relation to health. Another prominent model related to demands and resources is the effort–reward imbalance (ERI) model (Siegrist
1996), which claims that an imbalance between high efforts spent at work and low reward received in turn (money, esteem, career opportunities, job security) has negative consequences for worker’s health.
Since poor health is known to affect retirement age, there is reason to believe that both low job demands and high job resources and beneficial combinations thereof—through their influence on health, work ability, and motivation—increase the likelihood of working longer among workers of pensionable age. Also, there are reasons to believe that psychosocial working conditions may have a stronger impact on the decision to continue working versus retiring when individuals approach and reach the normative retirement age, as there are both less normative requirements and economic necessity to continue working, whereas retirement can become an increasingly attractive option expected by society. For example, high job demands may be tougher to keep up with as working capacity and health deteriorates with age (Götz et al.
2018), and the importance of job resources may increase because they not only need to compensate for, but exceed the benefits that are linked to retirement. Therefore, we hypothesise that the importance of psychosocial working conditions on continued work increases with age.
The statutory pension age varies between European countries (Eurostat
2019). In Sweden, although the Swedish pension system is rather flexible with no fixed statutory retirement age, still 65 years is the normative retirement age (Anxo et al.
2017; SOU
2020: 69). During the data collection of this study, from the age of 61
1 (for both men and women) it was possible to retire (part- or full-time) and start receiving collected earnings-related state and civil servant
2 pension, while guarantee pension, paid to individuals with low collected earnings, was paid from 65. The employee had a legal right to continue working until the 67th birthday,
3 after which the individual could continue to work if agreed with the employer (
https://www.pensionsmyndigheten.se).
Empirical studies on psychosocial working conditions and timing of retirement
With regard to
early retirement, job demands and job resources are well-studied. According to a systematic review (Browne et al.
2019), high job demands were associated with intention to retire later, but not consistently with the timing of actual retirement. The evidence for a negative association between job resources, such as decision latitude and social support, and early retirement are more solid (Browne et al.
2019). Associations between job strain or ERI and actual early exit were not supported in one study (Robroek et al.
2013), but have been found between ERI and early retirement intentions in two other studies (Siegrist et al.
2007; Wahrendorf et al.
2013).
However, studies focusing on retirement timing not linked to early retirement or disability pension are still scarce. Some exceptions are a few studies that did not find support for a link between job demands and working longer (Carr et al.
2016; Van Solinge and Henkens
2014), whereas in terms of job resources, it was found that decision authority (Carr et al.
2016) or decision authority in combination with good health (Jonsson et al.
2019) increased the odds for working longer. Moreover, growth and promotion opportunities, recognition, and social support at work were also associated with prolonged working lives, whereas job challenge, training opportunities, and flexibility of work-time and place were not (Carr et al.
2016; Van Solinge and Henkens
2014). To date, neither job strain or ERI have received much attention with regard to prolonged working life (Browne et al.
2019) and associations between job strain (Carr et al.
2016; Virtanen et al.
2014) or ERI (Virtanen et al.
2014) and working longer have not been supported.
Finally, a limited number of studies have focused especially on working conditions that could influence individuals to work beyond statutory retirement age by distinguishing individuals that stopped working before statutory retirement age from those who continued working after statutory retirement age. These studies show mixed results. For example, one Danish study found that low quantitative demands were associated with working beyond statutory retirement age (65 years) (Andersen et al.
2021), whereas no such associations were supported in a series of studies on a sample of older workers from the Netherlands focussing on
bridge employment (combination of having pension while working after 65 years) versus full retirement at 65 years or earlier (de Wind et al.
2016; van der Zwaan et al.
2019). With regard to job resources, these latter studies found that workers who felt appreciated by colleagues and supervisors retired later (de Wind et al.
2016; van der Zwaan et al.
2019), but no associations between working beyond retirement age and decision authority, social support, or learning opportunities, respectively, were found (de Wind et al.
2016). The Danish study supported a link between several job resources (e.g. decision authority, recognition from management, and possibility for development) and working beyond retirement age (Andersen et al.
2021). Yet another study found that older retirees (more than six month after the statutory retirement date) reported more work-time control before retiring than younger retirees (Virtanen et al.
2014). Apart from the fact that these latter studies only distinguish between two groups, the exposures were often measured rather long time before the statutory retirement age, which means that for late pensioners, changes in working conditions preceding the years of retirement are not taken into account. Moreover, to our knowledge, no studies have examined whether the importance of psychosocial working conditions on actual retirement increases with age.
Hypotheses
Based on the review above, we hypothesise that: working longer (continued work in any of a 2-year follow-up intervals) among older workers (59 years and older) is predicted by lower levels of job demands (quantitative demands, emotional demands, and effort) (H1), higher levels of job resources (decision authority, skill use, learning, social support, work-time control, and reward) (H2), active, passive, and low-strain jobs compared to high-strain jobs (H3), and lower levels of ERI (H4). Additionally, we hypothesise that the importance of psychosocial working conditions for continued work increases with age (H5).
Discussion
In the present study, we examined whether good psychosocial working conditions, in terms of low job demands (quantitative demands, emotional demands, and effort) and high job resources (decision authority, skill use, learning opportunities, social support, work-time control, and reward) contributed to working longer among older employees and whether the strengths of these associations increased with age. Utilising data from participants 59 years and above drawn from an approximative representative cohort of the Swedish working population, we found support for associations between job resources—but not job demands—and continued work. The strengths of the associations between certain job resources and working longer increased with age.
Hypothesis 1 was not supported as associations between job demands and working longer were not found, which is in line with the majority of previous studies showing that job demands alone, such as quantitative and emotional demands, were not associated with retirement (Browne et al.
2019; Carr et al.
2016; Van Solinge and Henkens
2014). Moreover, age had no influence on the associations between job demands and continued work, which was a bit surprising as we hypothesised that ageing would make it harder for some individuals to cope with high job demands, and thus would act as push factors into retirement in accordance with
the health impairment process of the JD–R theory stating that high job demands predict exhaustion (Bakker et al.
2014). However, individuals with poor mental and physical capacity may before reaching the retirement age already have left the labour market due to, for instance, disability pension or long-term sickness absence.
With regard to job resources, in line with earlier studies examining psychosocial working conditions on actual retirement age (Andersen et al.
2021; Carr et al.
2016; Virtanen et al.
2014), we found that decision authority, skill use, learning opportunities, social support, work-time control, and reward were positively associated with working longer. Thus, hypothesis 2 was supported. This finding is in line with
the motivational process of the JD–R theory (Bakker et al.
2014), stating that high job resources predict work engagement. Moreover, using one’s skills, having opportunities to learn, perceiving control over one’s work tasks and time and receiving social support pertain to the three fundamental psychological needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness, of the self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci
2000). Job resources, thus, attract older workers to voluntarily stay in the labour market (Andersen and Sundstrup
2019).
With regard to job strain—the combination of quantitative demands and decision authority—hypothesis 3 was partly supported because workers in both active and low-strain jobs were more inclined to work longer compared to workers in high-strain jobs. This finding is not in line with the scarce existing evidence, which does not support a link between job strain categories and working longer (Carr et al.
2016; Robroek et al.
2013; Virtanen et al.
2014). However, two of these studies utilised different categorisations of job strain compared to ours, that is, Virtanen et al. (
2014) calculated the difference between job demands and job control, a strategy that fails to differentiate between active and passive jobs, and Robroek et al. (
2013) utilised the effort scale as the job demand variable and studied only early retirement. To be noted, in sensitivity analyses no interaction was found between quantitative demands and decision authority on the likelihood of working longer, which indicates that it was primarily decision authority (and not quantitative demands) that accounted for the influence on working longer. With regard to imbalance between effort and reward, in contrast to the few previous studies (Robroek et al.
2013; Virtanen et al.
2014), we did find support for an overall association between lower ERI and working longer, supporting hypothesis 4.
To our knowledge, the present study is the first which examined the impact of age on the association between psychosocial working conditions and timing of retirement. Partly supporting hypothesis 5, our findings suggest that skill use, work-time control, reward, and learning opportunities, as well as when the balance between effort and reward is favourable may increase in importance with age (at least up to 69) for continued work. One reason for this may be that job resources need to compensate in the form of work engagement for deferred pension benefits, such as time for leisure and other valuable things in life (SOU
2020: 69), and that working beyond normative retirement age may conflict with societal norms (Anxo et al.
2017). For example, more flexible work-time arrangements may facilitate work at older ages. However, conclusions about the older age groups must be drawn with some caution as the number of observations approaching 70 and above in our study was relatively few. This is expected because the majority of workers have retired by then. Nevertheless, more research is warranted on this older age category.
The associations presented in this study may underestimate the importance of resources for the motivation to work longer since the timing of retirement in many cases is involuntary, due to forced earlier (e.g. job loss, health limitations, family reasons) or later (e.g. financial necessity) retirement (Solem et al.
2016; Steiber and Kohli
2017) and strong social norms (Anxo et al.
2017). Meaning that if the retirement decision was completely up to the individuals’ own preferences, the psychosocial working conditions may have had even stronger implications. Although we adjusted the models for income and family situation, we still cannot completely rule them out as potential confounders, as these factors can impact retirement timing in a more complex way. Also, the role of health on the associations between psychosocial working conditions and retirement timing is complex, where health besides a direct effect on retirement timing, plausibly could act indirectly as a mediator or a moderator on the associations (between psychosocial working conditions and working longer) (Nilsson
2020). For example, systematic reviews show that poor psychosocial working conditions negatively influence health (e.g. Li et al.
2021; Theorell et al.
2015). Thus, including health as a covariate may underestimate the strength of the studied associations, and therefore, we decided against it. However, sensitivity analyses where self-rated health was included as an additional covariate to the fully adjusted models resulted in very similar effect sizes and significance levels as our original analyses (see Supplementary material). For overall effects, only one result differed—ERI turned non-significant (although over time it still increased in importance), suggesting that perhaps self-rated health mediate the influence of ERI on retirement timing. With regard to interactions with age, the significance levels were changed for effort and skill use, although the effect sizes were almost identical. Also, we tested whether there were any interaction effects between self-rated health and psychosocial working conditions in predicting continued work, such that people with poor health in combination with poor working conditions would be less likely to continue their work. However, no such effect was found.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths of this study are that we tested our hypotheses in a sizeable, approximately representative cohort with many time points and used several well-tested multi-item scales. But as with all research, there are also possible limitations. First, the data collection was originally not tailored for our purpose of study retirement, and therefore, we do not know the exact date of retiring. For example, for each transition, the baseline age of the respondents is known—when exposures are measured—but for individuals retired before the next wave, two years later, we do not know the exact age when they retired. This means that age, although mutually exclusive in terms of age when reporting on work environment, are not completely mutually exclusive in terms of age of retirement. Possibly this might have blurred the age differences, which might have been more distinct with more frequent data collections or perhaps with register data on annual sources (pension vs labour) of income (Jonsson et al.
2019). Despite this possible drawback, we found a tendency towards an increased influence of the work environment on continued work versus retirement in older ages. Second, this study probably includes healthier individuals than average because individuals with the poorest health and working conditions tend not to participate in studies, which can be a particular problem for longitudinal cohort studies. Third, we did not consider observations where the person worked less than 30% of a full-time job, which means that the results does not reveal the significance of working conditions for reducing work-time from over 30% to less than 30%, and from there to retirement. It should also be noted that some exposure scales were introduced in later waves, meaning that the different analyses are based on different number of observations. In spite of these possible limitations, this study contributes with new insights of the influence of job demands and job resources on prolonged working lives and their importance in relation to age.
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