Paid work beyond retirement age in Germany and Britain. Sociological analyses of atypical combinations of employment and old age pensions

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Simone Scherger
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 166042976

Since 2010, the project has been examining employment beyond pension age and after the transition into retirement. This is done on an empirical basis and comparing Germany and Britain. Until now, paid employment in retirement has been an atypical combination of work, payments from pensions and old age. This increasingly frequent combination is counter to the assumed finality of retirement. Against the background of changing demographics and related welfare state reforms the study of this kind of biographically late employment is sociologically and politically highly relevant.First, the incidence and structures of employment in retirement are investigated through the quantitative analysis of secondary data. Specific individual socio-structural characteristics and biographical constellations in the area of work and family increase the probability of retirees to engage in paid work. Furthermore, we study the effects of this employment on health, wellbeing and life satisfaction. Second, using problem-centred interview with retirees in paid employment, we examine the biographical meaning of their employment for them and how they deal with institutional regulations. Based on this, types of working beyond pension age are developed. The third focus of the research group is on welfare state traditions and institutional arrangements relating to employment in retirement, and on the collective discourses around the change of these arrangements. In these discourses, different collective actors debate employment in old age and future forms of provision for retirement. The qualitative analysis of these discourses in expert interviews and in documents (especially official statements of involved actors) brings to centre stage the socially mediated ideas around old age provision and work in old age, in particular normative conceptions of individual responsibility and ideas of justice.Studying paid employment in retirement through mixed methods provides a clearer understanding of the interplay between individual biographical action and welfare state institutions while conditions in both spheres are changing. The comparison between Germany and Britain sheds light on the influence of different institutional conditions and welfare state traditions, and the application of mixed methods facilitates a dialogue between structure-oriented and action-oriented perspectives.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups