INVOLUNTARY RETIREMENT STUDY Since the first report in January 1969 on the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, annual reports to the Congress have presented findings, as they have become available, regarding institutional and other arrangements that give rise to involuntary retirement (Section 5 of the Act). As noted below, three surveys are still in progress and will be covered in future ADEA annual reports. Although much has been written on retirement, many facets still are unknown. 1/ For example, how many people are involuntarily retired In the United States between the ages of 40 and 65? Are they really "involuntarily retired" or are they "voluntary retirements?" To complicate matters further, it is often not feasible to obtain recent retiree lists from employers to study involuntary retirement because of possible legal complications, or because the recordkeeping systems of some employers do not provide for the ready retrieval of such data. 2/ 1/ Three ongoing sources of information regarding older workers are: (a) an inventory of current statistical sources on the elderly prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Administration on Aging; (b) a study by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission of age discrimination under Federally assisted programs and activities which is required to be transmitted to the President and the Congress by May 28, 1977, under the provisions of the "Older Americans Amendments of 1975;" and (c) the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, which is a continuing central source for the public sale of Government-sponsored research, development, and engineering reports and other analyses prepared by Federal agencies, their contractors or grantees. In addition, a bibliography of aging research projects funded by various Federal Government agencies was published in June 1976 for the Interdepartmental Task Force on Research in Aging under a U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare contract (HEW 105-76-3000) with Documentation Associates Information Services, Incorporated, entitled "A Comprehensive Inventory and Analysis of Federally Supported Research in Aging, 1966-1975," (a series of 10 volumes). 2/ U.S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, Manpower Research and Development Projects, 1974 edition, A study of private pension plan provisions giving rise to involuntary retirements, pp. 129-130. Surveys in Progress Two longitudinal studies were still in progress at the end of 1976: Dr. Herbert S. Parnes, Ohio State University, The Pre-Retirement Years: A longitudinal study of the labor market experience of men, and the Social Security Administration's Retirement History Study. In addition, an analysis is in process of data from the Employer Policies and Practices Survey of September 1973, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Employment Standards Administration. The Parnes' Study Dr. Parnes' fourth volume, The Pre-Retirement Years: Five Years in the Work Lives of Middle-Aged Men, on the labor market experience of men aged 45-59, was published in 1975 and encompassed an overview of the full five years (19661971) that the men were surveyed. Data for the earlier years were previously published in Volumes I (1966), II (1967), and III (1968 and 1969). Volume IV indicated that the original five-year survey period has been extended for five more years. The Parnes' study is expected to be completed with the publication of another volume which will cover the extended five-year period of the survey, 1971-1976, the telephone interviews of 1973 and 1975, the 1976 face-toface interview, and the Secretary of Labor's invitational conference. 1/ 1/ An Employment and Training Administration (formerly Manpower Administration) grant was awarded to Temple University to conduct the Secretary of Labor's Invitational Conference on December 17, 1976, on the National Longitudinal Surveys of Pre-Retirement Years. Scholars were invited to prepare papers based on the Parnes' data and to emphasize potential national policy and program applications. Retirement History Study The Social Security Administration's longitudinal Retirement History Study, conducted biennially by the Bureau of the Census from 1969 to 1977, will contain some data pertinent to involuntary retirement, based on the second round of interviews conducted in 1971. An introductory article entitled "Retirement History Study's First Four Years: Work, Health, and Living Arrangements" was published in the December 1976 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, and is scheduled to be followed in 1977 by an article on labor force participation patterns which will cover some aspects of involuntary retirement based on the 1971 and 1973 surveys. 1/ The December 1976 article described some of the changes that have taken place over a 4-year period in the lives of the cohort of retirement-age persons being followed by the Social Security Administration's Retirement History Study. Survey data were first collected in 1969 and will be gathered every 2 years until those in the sample who were 58-63 reach ages 68-73. Changes in worklife, health, family life and living arrangements are noted for men and women separately as they age from the preretirement years (ages 58 to 63) to the more typical retirement ages (62 to 67). The December report is slated to be followed by a series of in-depth analyses examining the ways retirement affects the other changes experienced by this cohort of individuals as they begin the retirement process. 17 Although a series of articles on the Retirement History Study will appear periodically in issues of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social Security Administration, Social Security Bulletin, only the upcoming article is expected to be relevant to involuntary retirement. For example, articles analyzing other aspects of the retirement process published in 1976 included one which appeared in the August 1976 issue entitled "Retirement Patterns in the United States: Research and Policy Interaction" and another in the December 1976 issue entitled "Work Status and Income Change, 1968-72: Retirement History Study Preview." The August 1976 Social Security Bulletin contained an article based on a paper presented at the International Social Security Association Round Table Meeting on Implications for Social Security of Research on Aging and Retirement, The Hague, April 27-29, 1976. The article, "Retirement Patterns in the United States: Research and Policy Interaction," among other things, noted that although the social security program was intended to offer the aged a choice of leisure or work, there is now concern about high retirement rates. It pointed out some of the issues related to age at retirement and the impact of the social security program's monthly earnings test on work incentives among the elderly, drawing together relevant information from several cross-sectional studies and two longitudinal surveys. The article also indicated how research findings have led to policy recommendations and proposals for additional research. The same surveys that show retirement by age 65--if not earlier--as becoming more acceptable demonstrate that many older workers and would-be workers have health problems that limit or preclude employment. Often, social security benefits have been their main income source, and substantial numbers of men in their sixties and early seventies are identified as living on a combination of modest current earnings and social security benefits. These surveys find that of the older workers with second pension rights, some claim social security benefits early in order to enjoy leisure, while others wait until age 65, when most private pension plans require retirement. The August 1976 article indicated that more than half of the workers surveyed in 1969 for the Retirement History Study who were reinterviewed in 1973 were still employed in 1973 when they had reached age 62-67. Men with wage and salary jobs in 1969 were much less likely than the selfemployed of the same age to be working in 1973; and men and women who stopped working between 1969 and 1973 frequently reported factors associated with age or retirement as the reason for leaving the last job, citing such reasons as age, plans to draw a pension, or desire to stop working. The article also noted that for some, compulsory retirement was undoubtedly a factor underlying these reasons, particularly among those aged 64-67. Roughly one-fourth to one-third cited health as the reason for leaving the last job. This proportion was considerably less than that for the nonworkers aged 58-63 who were interviewed in 1969 and cited that reason. Of the men who were not working four years earlier, 65 percent had reported that they left their jobs because of health. Thus, health emerges as the most common reason for premature retirement, but it declines in importance among those who retire closer to the institutionalized age of 65--when full social security benefits become available and the compulsory retirement policies of private pensions often go into effect. |