Author : XiaoYu Gong
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (129 download)
Book Synopsis To BE Or Not to BE? Inequities in Bridge Employment (BE) Characteristics and Mental Health Among Older Workers - A Systematic Review and a Longitudinal Study by : XiaoYu Gong
Download or read book To BE Or Not to BE? Inequities in Bridge Employment (BE) Characteristics and Mental Health Among Older Workers - A Systematic Review and a Longitudinal Study written by XiaoYu Gong and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bridge employment (BE), generally defined as working for pay after having "fully" retired or first reducing the number of hours worked, then retiring, is perceived as a solution to the challenges faced by aging societies (OECD, 2006; Smaliukiene & Tvaronaviciene, 2014). The OECD and governments of developed countries recognize that working in old age can help older workers remain financially independent and socially engaged (Kim & Feldman, 2000; OECD, 2006). However, despite the purported benefit of working in BE and the increase in participation in BE, empirical studies show that working in BE is not always positively or significantly associated with better mental health. Until this point, the literature on BE and mental health has been mostly focused on the mental health consequences, without further qualifying BE in terms of employment characteristics. Thus, this thesis draws from the sociology of work and labour economic theories and the health and employment literature to disentangle the nuanced conditions under which BE is associated with mental health outcomes.The first empirical chapter is a systematic review of all the studies that have examined the mental health consequences of BE participation by using repeatable and transparent review process that emphasizes the assessment of study quality. The systematic review results demonstrate that the conceptualization of BE is an important factor in influencing mental health outcomes. When BE is conceptualized based on participation, the association between BE and mental health is not significant. However, when BE participation occurs on a voluntary basis (Calvo et al., 2009; Dingemans & Henkens, 2014) and is with the same employer, or within the same occupation (Wang, 2007), BE is associated with better mental health outcomes compared to full retirement (Zhan et al., 2009). The results suggest that there may be a selection effect at play and more nuanced definitions of BE should be employed. Heeding this suggestion, the second and third empirical chapters study the variation in work conditions among those working in BE as well as the various selection processes at play in terms of who engages in what type of BE. These chapters use data from the Health and Retirement Survey from the United States, a nationally longitudinal dataset of older people conducted between 1994 and 2014 inclusively. The analytic sample includes 7967 respondents who stayed in the survey for six to ten years after initial retirement. The second empirical chapter examines how working in BE, in stressful and non-stressful BE, in physically demanding and non-physically demanding BE, and in precarious and less precarious BE are associated with mental health outcomes compared to full retirement. The fixed-effects model automatically controlled for all time-constant factors within the individual. The results show that working in BE in general, in non-stressful BE, in non-physically demanding BE and in less precarious BE are associated with improvements in mental health. Also, the results show that compared to being fully retired, working in stressful BE, physically demanding BE and more precarious BE transitions are not necessarily associated with worse mental health. The third empirical chapter focuses on selection effects to examine how pre-retirement factors are associated with people's participation in BE. The results show that having higher education, better health, and higher income increases people's likelihood of working in BE. This suggests that working in BE (relative to retirement) may be associated with better mental health because of favorable preexisting characteristics. Furthermore, there is strong evidence for path dependency or a life course effect in terms of the quality of BE employment. Financial debt and macroeconomic conditions also complicates the motivation and limitations of BE participation"--