Providing informal care next to paid work:explaining care-giving gratification, burden and stress among older workers

Contains fulltext : 219392.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)With an increasing retirement age, more older adults are combining employment with informal care-giving responsibilities. However, little is known about how older workers experience care-giving activities next to their paid jobs. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how the work situation (i.e. working hours, occupational status and perceived access to human resources practices) is associated with feelings of gratification, burden and stress in care-giving. Using data from the NIDI Pension Panel Survey, we study care-giving experiences - in other words, the extent to which care-giving activities are gratifying, burdensome or stressful - of 1,651 Dutch older workers (age 60–65) who provide care at least once per week. Multivariate analyses reveal that the work situation plays an explanatory role next to socio-demographic factors and indicators of the care-giving situation. Working care-givers who feel they have access to phased retirement and organisational health support experience care-giving as relatively less burdensome and stressful. Moreover, those with access to phased retirement experience relatively higher levels of gratification in care-giving. Our findings suggest that the availability of organisational support relates to lower levels of care-giving burden and stress, and to some extent to higher levels of gratification. Organisations thus play an important role in facilitating the combination of work and care-giving obligations in a context of longer working lives.19 p

Y The Differential Impact of Retirement on Informal Caregiving, Volunteering, and Grandparenting:Results of a 3-Year Panel Study

Contains fulltext : 227503.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Research on retirees' engagement in informal caregiving, formal volunteering, and grandparenting often views retirement as a permanent exit from the workforce. Retirement processes are, however, increasingly diverse: some retire fully while others remain in paid work after retirement from a career job. A relevant but understudied question is how these different retirement processes relate to changes in engagement in unpaid productive activities. Building on role theory, we hypothesize that full and working retirees face different consequences of retirement and, therefore, differ in engagement in unpaid productive activities. We analyze data that were collected in 2015 and 2018 among 4,882 Dutch individuals aged 60-65 and employed at baseline. Around half had fully retired at follow-up and ten percent worked after their retirement. At follow-up, more respondents are regularly volunteering (from 17% to 27%) and grandparenting (from 39% to 53%) than at baseline, while caregiving remains rather stable (from 33% to 30%). Conditional change models show that full retirement is associated with an increased likelihood of volunteering and grandparenting, but not caregiving. Engagement in post-retirement work is related to an increased likelihood of looking after the grandchildren, but not to volunteering or providing informal care. Our findings suggest that volunteering is important for replacing weak ties after full retirement, while grandparenting might be a new, central role in retirement - irrespective of work engagement. Retirees seem to engage in unpaid productive activities for different reasons.13 p

Partners' adjustment to older workers' retirement:testing the role of preretirement expectations in a 10-year panel study

Objectives: Retirement is not only an important later-life transition for the retiring individual, but also for his or her life partner. This study aims to improve our understanding of the partner’s adjustment to the retirement of the older worker, by paying attention to the multidimensional nature of adjustment, and by examining to what extent preretirement expectations are predictive of postretirement experiences. Well-established adjustment predictors – i.e. preretirement resources and characteristics of the work and retirement context – are also taken into account. Method: Analyses are based on Dutch three-wave multi-actor panel data, collected between 2001 and 2011 among 724 partners of older workers who transitioned into retirement during the course of the study. Results: Only a minority of the partners reported adjustment difficulties to the retirement of the employee. About 20 percent reported at least some financial problems, 8 percent reported relationship problems, and 10 percent reported problems with shared leisure time. Expected problems in all three domains were predictive of experienced problems in the same domain. For expected financial problems, a cross-over effect was observed: expected financial problems were also predictive of experienced adjustment difficulties with regards to shared leisure activities. Conclusion: Not only the older worker, but also the partner develops expectations on different dimensions about the shared postretirement future, and these expectations are related to postretirement experiences. Retirement counseling may therefore not only be relevant for older workers, but also for their partners, and needs to take the multidimensional character of retirement processes into account

Adaptation or Exploration? Understanding Older Workers' Plans for Post-Retirement Paid and Volunteer Work

Numerous investigations have sought to understand the types of individuals who engage in post-retirement work. However, little is known about why older adults are motivated to engage. The aim of the present article is to examine the extent to which two possible mechanisms—adaptation (adjusting to the loss of work role) and exploration (retirement as opportunity to engage in activities in line with personal values)—play a role in explaining planning for paid work or volunteering after retirement. Analyses are based on large-scale survey data collected in 2015 among older workers in the Netherlands (N = 6,278). Results show that the large majority of older Dutch workers have plans for post-retirement paid and/or volunteer work. Moreover, both mechanisms appear to contribute to the understanding of post-retirement work plans, yet in different ways. Specifically, older workers who expect to miss latent work functions are more likely to have plans for post-retirement work, with their general values guiding the type of work they gravitate toward. Having plans for post-retirement paid work was more prevalent among older workers who attached more importance to personal growth, whereas having plans for volunteer work was more prevalent among older workers who had a stronger social orientation. Moreover, results suggest that men, more often than women, translate the anticipated loss of latent work functions into plans for post-retirement paid work. These insights regarding the motivational antecedents of post-retirement work plans are highly relevant in light of policy discussions of active and healthy aging

The experience of the transition to retirement: rapid evidence review

Report 'The experience of the transition to retirement: Rapid evidence review' published in December 2018 by Ageing Better by 'Centre for Ageing Better' in London