Comments on:
Angrisani, Kapteyn, and Meier
“Non-Monetary Job Characteristics and
Employment Transitions at Older Ages”
SSA Retirement Research Consortium
Annual Meeting, August 7, 2015
David Weir
University of Michigan
What is this paper trying to tell
us?
Non-monetary job characteristics
matter
Or,
work is not just about the money
What else?
• Which characteristics matter
• To which outcomes
• From which source of information
What data?
• HRS
– Self-reported work status
– Self-reported job characteristics
– Many other covariates
• Matched at detailed occupation level to
O*Net
– A compilation of information on “average” job
characteristics in the occupation
What methods?
• Multinomial logit for employment transitions
• OLS for intentions/expectations
Transition from FT Employment
• Policy goal is (or should be) to encourage
people to stay in FT employment a little longer
• I will focus on just that outcome of transitions,
not the details of where people go when they
leave FT employment
Prob of staying in FT work, relative
to age 55
How does their model do on other
things we know about?
0.05
0
-0.05
-0.1
Model
-0.15
Actual
-0.2
-0.25
-0.3
55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
Age
A: Pretty well
• Probably should make spline point at cohortspecific NRA and not at age 65 for all
Job characteristics
• Physical abilities decline with age, so more
physically demanding jobs are likely to be
associated with earlier retirement
• Cognitive abilities decline with age, and
technological change (computers) increase
demands over time
• Job stress should lead to earlier departure
Estimated Effects of Job Characteristics on
Remaining in Full-Time Work
0.02
0.015
0.01
0.005
HRS
0
O*net
-0.005
HRS | O*net
-0.01
O*net | HRS
-0.015
-0.02
Computer
Physical
demands
Stress
Self-report vs “objective”
• Self-report much better than objective on stress
– Makes sense that an individual job situation and an
individual’s subjective evaluation are more relevant than
some average over many similar jobs
• Physical demands encourage departure
– Self-report and objective are similar but objective “beats”
subjective head to head
• Not much different on computer use
– Positive effect of computers is perhaps surprising
– Without controlling for physical demands, it may just be
that using computers is a proxy for not being physically
demanding
What about retirement intentions
• HRS asks about planned retirement age,
probabilities of working FT at 62 and 65
• These predict behavior reasonably well and
respond to things
Average expected probability of working full-time past
age 62, and age 65, for currently employed persons
aged 55-60, 1992-2014
70
60
50
40
Age 62
30
Age 65
20
10
0
1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
Impact of job characteristics not as
clear or consistent
• Computer use raises SP of future work, selfreport beats O*net in a close decision
• Physical demands lowers SP only from O*net
• Stress lowers SP only from HRS self-report
Next steps
• Estimate effects of job characteristics jointly to
isolate unique effects of each
• Think about interactions
– Does having a physically demanding job interact
with physical limitations (walking, stooping, lifting,
etc)?
– Does having a cognitively demanding job interact
with cognitive ability or decline?
– Does job stress interact with depression?
Implications for encouraging longer
work lives
• Policy implications not so clear
– Not going to subsidize SS benefits or tax rates
according to job characteristics
– Not going to regulate employers to make jobs less
physically demanding or give everyone computers
– Might want to enforce or expand rules on
accommodation of age-related disability in the
workplace, IF there is an interaction between
characteristics and physical limitations
Implications for encouraging longer
work lives
• Might be some room for advising people how
to avoid “premature” retirement
• Recognize mismatch of your aging trajectory
and your current job’s demands
• Think about changing jobs earlier to one that will let
you work longer (less physically demanding)
• Find ways to manage stress
• And let me know when you find it…
THANK YOU
http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/