2022/12/15 by Wouter De Tavernier, de Tavernier, Wouter, Ave Roots +1
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Europe #Global Health Care Issues #Preferred retirement age #Retirement, Disability, and Employment #job control #job demand #legal retirement age
paper · pdf · doi:10.58036/stss.v7i3.303
openalex publication_date 2025/09/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Debates surrounding working longer focus mainly on increasing legal and effective retirement ages, leaving the preferred retirement age largely overlooked. There is a large East-West divide in Europe regarding the latter, with individuals in Eastern Europe wanting to retire earlier. We aim to explain this gap in terms of differences in working conditions and state-level legal conditions. Using the 2010 European Social Survey data on employed individuals aged 50-70 in 24 countries enriched with country-level information, we find that part of the explanation is found in the lower levels of job control found in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the results suggest that Karasek’s job demand/control model fits better in Western than Eastern European countries. Another explanation is found at the country level, where the legal retirement age accounts for a major part of the gap in preferred retirement ages between East and West.