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Early retirement in the Arabian Gulf States and in Kuwait in particular became a public issue before and after the Gulf War. Reports a recent study of Kuwaiti nationals who retired from the Government sector from 1979 to 1989: more than 84 per cent of the sample were 50 years of age and younger; more than 70 per cent of the women and 52 per cent of the men were college graduates; more than 74 per cent of the women and 32 per cent of the males spent less than 25 years in service; and more than 51 per cent of men and 42 per cent of women worked after their retirement. The sample considered early retirement benefits and management‐organizational factors to be the major influences on their early retirement decision and proposed improving the management‐organization factors through training, managerial development, career development, and counselling as means for reducing the outflow of Kuwaiti manpower from the Government sector, and offsetting the early retirement trend.

This paper aims to look at model retirement behavior with a focus on early retirement where there is an option for “buy‐outs”. An employer can offer employees generous pension programs if the employees agree on early retirement. Earlier studies have neglected such offers, but in doing so, estimates of the individuals' responses to financial incentives in a retirement decision are likely to be biased upward.

The authors propose an estimation strategy where the retirement decision and the accesses to early retirement pension (ERP) offers are estimated in a simultaneous equation system, yielding unbiased estimates of the model parameters. They apply the model using detailed Swedish register data.

The results indicate that the marginal effects in retirement probability with respect to a change in financial incentives is less pronounced if ERPs are accounted for. Further, results imply that the early retirement probabilities would decrease, depending on year, by 14‐28 percent for males and 7‐18 percent for females if ERP offers were absent.

As the motives for early retirement pensions most likely stem from how the collective agreement occupational pensions are financed, this emphasizes the need for a debate on the preferable construction of these systems. This becomes particularly important in view of the increased old age dependency ratios that are expected in the near future.

Although these offers have important policy implications they have received limited attention. This paper fills an important gap in the existing pension literature, and it analyzes early retirement and tries to assess the importance of special early retirement pension programs for these outcomes.

To cope with the workforce shortages brought by population ageing, it is critical to understand the workplace micro-foundations that determine the mechanisms of older workers' early retirement intentions. Drawing on the conservation of resource theory, this study examines the spillover effect of strain-based family-to-work conflict (SFWC) on early retirement intentions, with emotional exhaustion as a mediator. Additionally, it investigates the contextual resources, HR practice flexibility, as a boundary condition for the above relationships.

The study tests the hypotheses by employing a multi-sourced matching sample of 231 workers (aged 45–65) and their 49 managers.

The results of cross-level analysis revealed that SFWC has a positive indirect relationship with early retirement intentions, through increased emotional exhaustion. The relationship between emotional exhaustion and early retirement intentions is weaker when older employees experience higher HR practice flexibility.

This study is the first to use a resources perspective to analyse early retirement mechanisms, and it examines the spillover effect of SFWC on early retirement intentions. The findings also contribute to the literature on the role of HR practice for ageing workers.

The paper seeks to describe the multitude of pathways to early exit from the labour force and to estimate how individuals allocate into different pathways out of the labour force conditional on early retirement.

A multinomial logit approach is used to analyse the characteristics of individuals who retire through each pathway compared to those remaining in the labour force.

Eight pathways from work to an early retirement programme are identified. Overall, availability and/or generosity of retirement programmes are important for early retirement through the employment and unemployment insurance benefit dominated pathways, while personal characteristics seem to be at least as important for early retirement through other pathways.

An interesting approach in future work would be to gain access to health data, making it possible to build a competing risks model where some pathways are used due to health shocks and others are chosen based on economic optimisation comparing compensation rates with disutility from continued work.

While the dominant approach in many retirement studies is on destinations, the analytical focus in this paper is instead on how people span the period from leaving the job until entry into an early retirement programme. The period the authors study contains a policy experiment, where a programme for early retirement conditional on age and unemployment is opened and closed down again later in the period.

The purpose of this paper is to isolate and evaluate the causal effect of the changes in eligibility criteria on labor force participation (LFP) and exit to retirement of the cohorts affected by the reform that canceled most of the early pensions in Poland in 2009. At the individual level the reform created a huge discontinuity in treatment of different generations.

The authors rely on Polish Labor Force Survey and employ regression discontinuity design to evaluate the change in participation subsequent to the eligibility reform among the treated cohorts.

The authors find a statistically significant, but economically small discontinuity at the timing of the reform. The placebo test shows no similar effects in earlier or later quarters. Yet, the pure treatment effects are insignificant in vast majority of the specifications.

There are some limitations of the data used in the research. It does not cover total population and some panel attrition can be expected. Authors also needed to cope with the lack of required details in survey questions. The main limitation of the method lies in the measurement of the immediate (short-term) effects while in many cases people require more time that 1–2 quarters for the decision after policy change.

The reduction of outflows to retirement was much less pronounced than could have been expected, largely due to already relatively lower propensity to retire early.

There are two main policy implications of the study. First, constraining the pension eligibility criteria for retirement are frequently opposed by social actors. It is often considered that early retirement is a privilege – awarded on a basis of occupation or even simply employment in an industry. In many countries – e.g. France, Italy, Germany – attempts to make the eligibility criteria more strict resulted in general strikes and Poland was no exception from this rule. If treatment effects of the large and radical eligibility reform are small in participation rates and pension take-up rates, then immediate fiscal effects are bound to be small as well, even if in the desirable direction. This may explain why – given the strong social resistance – in many countries eligibility reforms are delayed or narrowed in scope. Second, the economic rationale for strong social resistance to eligibility reforms builds on assuming either a relatively high valuation of leisure time after exiting the labor market or a relatively high subjective valuation of the unemployment risk after passing the early retirement age threshold. If leisure preference is overstated, reducing eligibility may be opposed as such, but eligibility alone is irrelevant for household decision making. Meanwhile, unemployment risk may be mitigated via alternative instruments, such as employment protection legislation, as is the case in Poland. Depending on a specific composition of the two factors in a given country, the effects of the eligibility reforms may be as high as in Switzerland or as low as in Poland.

First, the authors provide an analysis of discontinuities in transitions from activity to retirement, rather than focusing on the labor market status. The panel dimension of the data permits to observe directly the flows into retirement/inactivity, controlling for age and birth cohort. Second, the authors complement a pure discontinuity in cohort analysis with a fuzzy design, because in addition to age eligibility the authors also analyze the effects of changes in occupational eligibility. Third, the authors provide a benchmark for the estimates in the actual quarter of the reform by a series of placebo and conditional specifications. This allows to evaluate the (immediate) size and heterogeneity of the treatment effects. The authors find small effects of age eligibility reduction and effectively no effects of occupational eligibility. Hence, increased LFP of the elderly, observed even prior to the reform, seems to be driven by factors unrelated to early pension eligibility.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conceptual framework about human resources downsizing and restructuring and how organizations of the public sector can do that effectively and efficiently. These facts drive to the conclusion that the implementation of early retirement incentives requires the most elaborate planning and execution to be effective, predictable and safe in the long term.

This paper adopts an analytical, descriptive methodology approach to describe the basic features of the data by using the descriptive research design. Data have been collected through different sources, which include secondary data, to introduce the theoretical literature of the subject as books, journals, articles, published working papers and referred previous studies related to the same subject.

Downsizing process is a deliberate administrative process that includes, but is not limited to, workforce reduction and is primarily aimed at achieving efficiency in public organizations. The definition of workforce downsizing may be narrowed to reducing the number of workers, or more likely to refer to general efforts to restructuring human resources in public organizations, Early Retirement Incentive Programs (ERIP) represents a viable alternative for organizations seeking to reduce staff. For the ERIP to be successful, the program coordinator must understand the business objectives and goals that the organization is trying to obtain.

Human resources strategies concerning downsizing public administration workforce should be more appropriate to those who leave the organization and those who stay at work, reducing the negative psychological, administrative and economical effects. This could be achieved through a strategy called early retirement incentive programs.

In the 1990s, individuals aged 18–64 were eligible for disability insurance, if their work capacity was reduced by at least 25 percent (50 percent before 1993). In the beginning of the period, before 1991, disability insurance could also be granted for labor market reasons (i.e., if unemployed had been compensated long enough to exhaust their benefits – obtained benefits for 300 days). This possibility was gradually phased out after 1991. In 1995, the enforcement of the rules was tightened. When evaluating applications for disability pensions, local insurance offices now had to request a medical certificate and a work-related test of the applicant's degree of work capacity. Local offices also had to consult the applicant's employer, physician, or other qualified personnel, and even pay personal visits to the applicant. The possibilities for rehabilitating the applicant should also be investigated. From 1997, work incapacity should be evaluated in relation to all possible employment opportunities. Potential income changes resulting from changes in employment should not affect the evaluation⁴ (National Social Insurance Board, 2005).

The aim of this study is to compare the Spanish and Italian early work retirement (EWR) models in a sample comprising individuals from both countries based on the level of voluntariness involved in labour market exit, psychosocial outcomes, perceived consequences, socio‐demographic variables and motivation.

The authors used a cluster analysis approach to carry out a cross‐sectional study based on a total sample of 1,131 early retirees (605 Spaniards and 526 Italians) drawn from different industries.

In the Spanish but not in the Italian case, EWR was predominantly perceived as forced. K‐means cluster analysis identified four groups of early retirees in both countries based on perceived outcomes of EWR. Two of these clusters represent extreme positive and negative assessments of early retirement consequences, while the remaining two reflect intermediate positions.

These results show that the involuntary Spanish EWR model is associated with a significant negative outcomes cluster, whereas voluntary early retirees in Italy are significantly grouped in the positive outcomes cluster. Variables referring to early exit motives, attitudes towards work and post‐working life and psychosocial adjustment are employed to define the clusters.

This study reveals the existence of significant differences in the level of voluntariness between EWR in Spain and its Italian counterpart, in line with the findings obtained by other researchers. The findings support the conclusions of studies that suggest the existence of differences in post‐employment life depending on the level of voluntariness concerned in retirement from the labour market.

Drawing on a unique combination of longitudinal administrative data and a postal survey, the purpose of this paper is to identify the socio-economic factors and individual characteristics that affect senior citizens’ decision to continue working on the Swedish labour market after the standard retirement age.

By using standard econometric techniques (multinomial logit model) on a large representative sample of 20,000 senior citizens residing in Sweden, the auhtors analyse the extent to which socio-economic factors and individual characteristics including personality traits affect the decision of senior citizens to delay retirement and to continue working after the standard retirement age.

The results of our estimations show clearly that good health, high educational attainment/high-skilled jobs, good psychosocial work environment, employment status (to be self-employed), personality traits (extraversion, openness to experience and conscientiousness) as well as industrial sectors (agriculture, healthcare and transport) are strong predictors of the continuation of work after the standard retirement age (65 years old).

High job quality and good working conditions, along with continuous improvements in public health, are seemingly essential elements for motivating senior workers to delay retirement as are preventive policy measures favouring the development of decent and sustainable working conditions across the life course.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is the first attempt in Sweden to analyse jointly a large range of factors influencing the decision to remain in the labour force after the standard/normal pension age, including psychosocial working conditions and personality traits.

Retirement: is it the ‘golden years’ or is it relegation to the ‘human scrapheap’? In reality, it may be either, depending on a multitude of factors interrelated in a complex process. This paper presents a model that describes this process and explains the retirement decision in behavioural terms. The model also shows the interaction between environmental, institutional and individual variables; their impact on retirement; and the impact of retirement upon them.