Opting In to Paid Work in Old Age

Abstract

Older people’s paid work takes on a distinctive character once retirement on an adequate pension has become a realistic alternative. Rather than retiring, these older workers are opting in to the labour market, by continuing their pre-existing work arrangements, adapting them, or seeking new jobs. This way of working—facilitated by old-age income security systems—merits both theoretical and empirical attention. The current paper offers a multidisciplinary account of the distinctive nature of these opt-in jobs and suggests potential conditions and mechanisms that underpin them. We make the case that these workers are no longer compelled to work for pay by financial necessity, as retirement income systems have removed or substantially eased breadwinning pressures, and that they are defying social conventions calling on them to retire. These opt-in older workers typically seek to maximize the intrinsic rewards of paid work while defending their hard-won freedom over their time and energy. Two mechanisms appear to generate the distinctive nature of these jobs: differential selection of older adults out of the labour market and changes in the nature of jobs held by people working in the years normally set aside for retirement. We outline the value of opt-in workers for developing gerontological theory and suggest several promising avenues for empirical research, including the influence of retirement income systems upon working lives, strategic interactions between employees and employers, and the changing priorities of older people themselves as they age.