As populations continue to age in OECD countries (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), there are renewed calls to promote the labour force participation of older workers. However, actual retirement ages have already been on the rise for the last 20 to 30 years. Though researchers have a good grasp of what causes differences in retirement behaviour between individuals or across countries, their understanding of what causes change in retirement behaviour over time is less systematic. Therefore, Michaël Boissonneault, Jaap Oude Mulders, Konrad Turek and Yves Carriere reviewed literature that studied the causes of increases in retirement age over the past 30 years in OECD countries. The articles were found through a keyword search of specific academic databases and most focused on a small group of countries in Europe and North America.
From the articles reviewed by Boissonneault and colleagues, it was found that changes to the social security systems effectively contributed to increases in observed retirement ages. More specifically, increases in the legal retirement age and the limiting of access to early retirement programmes, such as the extensive reforms in Germany and Austria, contributed to people postponing their retirement. These reforms included financial penalties to individuals that claimed retirement benefits before reaching the national retirement age. In the United States, a decrease in the proportion of workers having defined benefits pension plans and an increase in those having a defined contribution plan resulted in a considerable increase in labour force participation among older men. For the United Kingdom, removing earnings tests past the national retirement age led to increases in hours worked among men aged 65-69 and women aged 60-64. Though such reforms to social security systems contributed to increases in observed retirement ages, they could not explain all recent increases. Other factors that contributed to increases in observed retirement ages found in the literature include increases within cohorts in educational attainment among men and women, and increases in female labour force participation which led to married men working longer.
Based on their review, the authors pointed out additional factors that could affect the increase in retirement age, but had not been analysed by scholars thus far. For example, no studies looked at the influence of improvements in adults’ health and their ability to work on increases in age when exiting the labour market. The studies also did not explore the role of increased recognition of the value of older workers, the decline in physically demanding jobs and growth of flexible work conditions. There have been changes in how accepting society is of older workers , as well as a change in how young people view work and retirement. Following the Great Recession in 2007-2008, there was an increase in older adults faced with higher debt, decreased coverage of private pension plans and decreased returns on private savings, which are contributing factors to older adults having less disposable income and needing to work longer. All of these factors have not been thoroughly analysed. Therefore, in order to better understand causes of increases in retirement age, more research is necessary to look at these additional influencing factors.