Der Übergang in den Ruhestand von Ehepaaren: Auswirkungen individueller und familiärer Lebensverläufe

Abstract

"The paper addresses two questions. (1) Which factors help us to understand the timing of retirement of individuals: When and why do men and women retire and what are the differences among them? (2) Which factors help us to understand the timing of retirement of couples: Why do some couples retire jointly while others retire separately? These questions are analyzed by using retrospective data taken from the German Life History Study, age cohort 1919/21. Logit analysis show how age and health related factors as well as attributes of the occupational trajectory are most decisive for men while women retire according to the interaction between occupational factors and family conditions, such as spouses' age, labor force participation and income. At the level of households, discriminant analyses indicate that the concepts of status compatibility between spouses (Parsons, Oppenheimer) can explain whether spouses retire jointly or separately. Hence, it does not suffice to know individual attributes of wife and husband (such as their age). Instead, the household life course and the intrafamilial inequality between husband and wife must be taken into account in any analysis of individual life courses." (author's abstract)