IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6938.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bridge Jobs in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Brunello, Giorgio

    (University of Padova)

  • Langella, Monica

    (University of Verona)

Abstract

We study the transitions from career to bridge jobs and to permanent retirement by European males aged 55 to 70 at the time of the interview in the late 2000s. We find that only 10.54 percent of the workers in our sample who were in a career job at age 50 have moved to a bridge job by the time of the interview, much less than what usually found in the United States. We also show that the exogenous increases in minimum retirement age that occurred during the past twenty years have had different effects in Central / Northern Europe (Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Sweden) and in Mediterranean Europe (Italy and Spain). In the North, transitions into bridge jobs have increased, with no significant effect on transitions into retirement. In the South, transitions into permanent retirement have decreased, with no significant effect on transitions into bridge jobs.

Suggested Citation

  • Brunello, Giorgio & Langella, Monica, 2012. "Bridge Jobs in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 6938, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6938
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6938.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Silva, Olmo, 2007. "The Jack-of-All-Trades entrepreneur: Innate talent or acquired skill?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 118-123, November.
    2. Viola Angelini & Agar Brugiavini & Guglielmo Weber, 2009. "Ageing and unused capacity in Europe: is there an early retirement trap? [‘The strategic bequest motive: evidence from SHARE’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 24(59), pages 463-508.
    3. Jean-Olivier Hairault & Francois Langot & Thepthida Sopraseuth, 2010. "Distance to Retirement and Older Workers' Employment: The Case for Delaying the Retirement Age," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(5), pages 1034-1076, September.
    4. Kevin E. Cahill & Michael D. Giandrea & Joseph F. Quinn, 2005. "Are Traditional Retirements a Thing of the Past? New Evidence on Retirement Patterns and Bridge Jobs," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 626, Boston College Department of Economics.
    5. Avner Ahituv & Joseph Zeira, 2011. "Technical Progress and Early Retirement," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 171-193, March.
    6. Brunello, Giorgio & Weber, Guglielmo & Weiss, Christoph T., 2012. "Books Are Forever: Early Life Conditions, Education and Lifetime Income," IZA Discussion Papers 6386, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Tunga Kantarci & Arthur Soest, 2008. "Gradual Retirement: Preferences and Limitations," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(2), pages 113-144, June.
    8. Joseph Quinn, 1996. "The Role of Bridge Jobs in the Retirement Patterns of Older Americans in the 1990s," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 324., Boston College Department of Economics.
    9. Giorgio Brunello & Guglielmo Weber & Christoph T. Weiss, 2017. "Books are Forever: Early Life Conditions, Education and Lifetime Earnings in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(600), pages 271-296, March.
    10. Peracchi, Franco & Welch, Finis, 1994. "Trends in Labor Force Transitions of Older Men and Women," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(2), pages 210-242, April.
    11. Alfonso Arpaia & Kamil Dybczak & Fabiana Pierini, 2009. "Assessing the short-term impact of pension reforms on older workers' participation rates in the EU: a diff-in-diff approach," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 385, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    12. Jonathan Gruber & David Wise, 1997. "Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World: Introduction and Summary of Papers by..," NBER Working Papers 6134, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Kevin E. Cahill & Michael D. Giandrea & Joseph F. Quinn, 2005. "Are Traditional Retirements a Thing of the Past? New Evidence on Retirement Patterns and Bridge Jobs," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 626, Boston College Department of Economics.
    14. Milligan, Kevin, 2014. "How is economic hardship avoided by those retiring before the Social Security entitlement age?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 420-438, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Serena Trucchi & Elsa Fornero & Mariacristina Rossi, 2018. "Retirement rigidities and the gap between effective and desired labour supply by older workers," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-19, December.
    2. Ellen Dingemans & Kène Henkens & Hanna van Solinge, 2017. "Working retirees in Europe: individual and societal determinants," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(6), pages 972-991, December.
    3. Vigtel, Trond Christian, 2018. "The retirement age and the hiring of senior workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 247-270.
    4. Jim Been & Olaf Vliet, 2017. "Early Retirement across Europe. Does Non-Standard Employment Increase Participation of Older Workers?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 163-188, May.
    5. Brunello, Giorgio & Comi, Simona Lorena, 2013. "The Side Effect of Pension Reforms on Training: Evidence from Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 7755, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Brunello, Giorgio & Comi, Simona, 2015. "The side effect of pension reforms on the training of older workers. Evidence from Italy," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 113-122.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Diana Warren, 2008. "Retirement Expectations and Labour Force Transitions: The Experience of the Baby Boomer Generation," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2008n24, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Bender, Keith A. & Mavromaras, Kostas & Theodossiou, Ioannis & Wei, Zhang, 2014. "The Effect of Wealth and Earned Income on the Decision to Retire: A Dynamic Probit Examination of Retirement," IZA Discussion Papers 7927, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Da Re, Filippo, 2023. "Pension reforms, longer working horizons and depression. Does the risk of automation matter?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Laura Turner & Giovanni Gallipoli, 2011. "Social Security, Endogenous Retirement, and Intrahousehold Cooperation," 2011 Meeting Papers 935, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Justina A.V. Fischer & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2006. "The Institutional Determinants of Early Retirement in Europe," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2006 2006-08, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    6. Nicole Bosch & Bas ter Weel, 2013. "Labour-Market Outcomes of Older Workers in the Netherlands: Measuring Job Prospects Using the Occupational Age Structure," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 199-218, June.
    7. Luca Marchiori & Olivier Pierrard & Henri R. Sneessens, 2011. "Demography, capital flows and unemployment," DEM Discussion Paper Series 11-14, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    8. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Mazzarella, Gianluca, 2018. "Does postponing minimum retirement age improve healthy behaviors before retirement? Evidence from middle-aged Italian workers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 215-227.
    9. Moller Dano, Anne & Ejrnaes, Mette & Husted, Leif, 2005. "Do single women value early retirement more than single men?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 47-71, February.
    10. Anders Stenberg & Olle Westerlund, 2013. "Education and retirement: does University education at mid-age extend working life?," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-22, December.
    11. Martina Celidoni & Chiara Dal Bianco & Guglielmo Weber, 2013. "Early retirement and cognitive decline. A longitudinal analysis using SHARE data," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0174, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    12. Michal Brzezinski, 2017. "Childhood circumstances, personality traits and adult-life economic outcomes in developing countries: Evidence from STEP," IBS Working Papers 05/2017, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    13. Lorenti, Angelo & Dudel, Christian & Myrskylä, Mikko, 2018. "The legacy of the great recession in Italy: a wider geographical, gender, and generational gap in working life expectancy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88302, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Langot, François & Moreno-Galbis, Eva, 2013. "Does the growth process discriminate against older workers?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 38(PB), pages 286-306.
    15. Martina Celidoni & Vincenzo Rebba, 2017. "Healthier lifestyles after retirement in Europe? Evidence from SHARE," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 18(7), pages 805-830, September.
    16. Nicole Bosch & Bas ter Weel, 2013. "Labour-market outcomes of older workers in the Netherlands: Measuring job prospects using the occupational age structure," CPB Discussion Paper 234, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    17. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio, 2013. "Laterborns Don't Give Up: The Effects of Birth Order on Earnings in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 7679, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Pierre-Jean Messe & Eva Moreno-Galbis & Fran ois-Charles Wolf, 2014. "Retirement intentions in the presence of technological change: Theory and evidence from France," TEPP Working Paper 2014-04, TEPP.
    19. Avner Ahituv & Joseph Zeira, 2011. "Technical Progress and Early Retirement," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 171-193, March.
    20. Regina T. Riphahn & Rebecca Schrader, 2017. "Institutional reforms and an incredible rise in old age employment," Working Papers 169, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ageing; retirement; Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6938. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.