Avoiding Retirement in Chile: Extending Working Lives in an Uncertain and Precarious Context

• In Event: 20826 - Aging and the Life Course

Abstract

Drawing on life-course, gender, and welfare regime theories, and relying on primary qualitative data (life story interviews with 90 older workers) and primary quantitative data (life course calendar surveys among 802 older individuals), "Avoiding Retirement in Chile" corresponds to monographic book edited by Routledge (Section ‘Advances in Sociology’), that aims to question the generalizability of age norms related to the transition to retirement in Chile, the Latin American country with the largest increase in the rate of active older workers over the last two decades.

By exploring, first, the diversity of employment statuses among older individuals, second, the perceptions involved in the retirement transition, and third, the association between adulthood trajectories and biographies in multiple life domains and (1) employment status and (2) retirement perceptions, the book specifically questions whether a definitive and permanent exit from the labor force can still be considered a transition that structures later life for most individuals. Instead, the study provides compelling evidence of the way in which retirement from any sort of economic activity is a transition in old age that is increasingly less sought after and instead perceived as a life stage that is progressively neither (1) financially affordable nor (2) voluntarily expected anymore.

"Avoiding Retirement in Chile" will be significant for innovative policy discussions in Latin American countries debating responses to population aging and how to improve older people’s lives and well-being through various institutional measures. Additionally, the book contributes to debates on the sustainability of private pension systems, which should interest European and North American countries that have introduced contributions into private accounts to complement existing state benefits. Consequently, the book targets a wide audience of policymakers, academics, and the general public concerned with the new dynamics of aging in the 21st century.

Author

• Ignacio Cabib, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile