America is at a crossroads in its approach to work and retirement.
Many policymakers think it's logical--almost inevitable--that Americans will delay retirement and spend more years in the paid labor force. But it's an assumption that doesn't match the reality faced by a large and growing proportion of Americans. Though in many ways today's middle-aged adults are less financially prepared for retirement than today's retirees, precarious working conditions, family caregiving responsibilities, poor health, and age discrimination will make it difficult or impossible for many to work longer.
Overtime offers a current, revelatory corrective to our understanding of the future of the American workforce and aging. Experts across economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and epidemiology examine how increasing economic and social inequalities, coupled with changes across generations or birth cohorts, call for a rethinking of the working-longer policy framework. The contributors examine trends and inequalities in employment, health, family dynamics, and politics, helping to shed light on the challenges faced by traditionally marginalized social groups while showing that our society's responses to an aging workforce affect us all. Together, they argue that policies affecting work must be considered alongside policies affecting retirement and provide a path forward to achieve better retirement security for all Americans.
Drawing on the deep and varied expertise of its contributors, Overtime critically questions the conventional thinking of policy makers in this space to chart a more likely course for older Americans in the twenty-first century--one less reductive than simply "working longer."
Author(s): Lisa F. Berkman, Beth C. Truesdale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: Demography Studies, Gerontology Social Sciences ,Human Resources
Pages: 353
City: New York
Tags: Demography Studies, Gerontology Social Sciences ,Human Resources
Cover
Overtime
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
About the Editors and Contributors
Is Working Longer in Jeopardy?
Part One Who Has a Job? Labor Trends from Commuting Zones to Countries
1. When I’m 54: Working Longer Starts Younger Than We Think
2. The Geography of Retirement
3. The European Context: Declining Health but Rising Labor Force Participation among the Middle-Aged
4. Planning for the “Expected Unexpected”: Work and Retirement in the United States after the COVID-19 Pandemic Shock
Part Two What’s the Fit? Workers and Their Abilities, Motivations, and Expectations
5. The Link between Health and Working Longer: Disparities in Work Capacity
6. The Psychology of Working Longer
7. Forecasting Employment of the Older Population
Part Three Lived Experience: The Role of Occupations, Employers, and Families
8. Dying with Your Boots On: The Realities of Working Longer in Low-Wage Work
9. Ad Hoc, Limited, and Reactive: How Firms Respond to an Aging Workforce
10. How Caregiving for Parents Reduces Women’s Employment: Patterns across Sociodemographic Groups
Part Four Politics and Policy: Where Population Aging Meets Rising Inequality
11. Working Longer in an Age of Rising Economic Inequality
12. How Does Social Security Reform Indecision Affect Younger Cohorts?
13. The Biased Politics of “Working Longer”
14. What Is the Way Forward? American Policy and Working Longer
Index