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Changing Retirement Transitions in Times of Paradigmatic Political Change: Toward Growing Inequalities

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Challenges of Aging

Abstract

For almost three decades since the 1970s, many European countries followed a strategy of early retirement to mediate the repercussions of increasing globalization and rising economic insecurities (Blossfeld et al., 2006, 2011). Initially intended only as a temporary strategy, early retirement soon turned into a common political practice. The establishment of early retirement as a labor market phenomenon was accompanied by the gradual emergence of an “early retirement culture,” that is, the shared perception by both employers and employees of early retirement as a “normal” way to exit from employment. However, given foreseeable population and labor force aging, many European governments in the last decade have taken a paradigmatic shift from “early exit” to “active aging” policies aiming at the promotion of longer labor market maintenance of workers approaching formal retirement ages.

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© 2015 Dirk Hofäcker, Moritz Hess and Elias Naumann

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Hofäcker, D., Hess, M., Naumann, E. (2015). Changing Retirement Transitions in Times of Paradigmatic Political Change: Toward Growing Inequalities. In: Torp, C. (eds) Challenges of Aging. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283177_11

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