A New Anatomy of the Retirement Process in Japan

In Japan, retirement is a gradual process that transpires over a particularly long period of time. Using large scale micro-level datasets from the Survey of Employment of the Elderly compiled by the Japanese government, we provide some stylized facts on the development of retirement behavior since the 1980s and explore factors affecting the individual retirement decision. First, we observed a general declining trend in the proportion of retired individuals aged 55-59 (especially females) while the proportion of retired individuals aged 65-69 (especially males) increased. Second, the survival analysis on actual retirement age shows that males who worked as an expert/technician or manager before retirement or individuals receiving a larger public pension income are likely to retire earlier. Third, another survival analysis on expected retirement age shows that workers with lower job satisfaction in terms of rewards and males with a larger family size are more likely to retire earlier.