4 Labour force participation and retirement
A key outcome of interest for this study is retirement, as opposed to labour force participation. This is because the interest for policy is in economic participation which can finance older individuals' consumption. However, this is not intended to denigrate the value of unpaid labour, for example, home production, volunteer work, or other non-market activity.
Retirement can be seen as the state when one reaches the age of eligibility for superannuation, or as a complete and sustained withdrawal from the labour force, or as transition out of the labour force over time. The key issue examined in this study is the divide between engaging in, or seeking, paid employment, in contrast to being “retired” with no paid work.
Therefore, we construct two mutually exclusive categories: labour force participation (employed or seeking work) and retirement (no paid work) which form the basis for analysis. Students, those with no identifiable labour force status, and those who report themselves to be homemakers are not included in this analysis.[1] This results in the classifications presented in Table 1. The participating group comprises those in full-time or part-time employment, or those unemployed and seeking work.
Notes
- [1]This amounts to 8% of the longitudinal sample.
