How Work Shapes the Golden Years: Structural Determinants of Security / Precarity in Later Life in America

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 3. Inequality and the Labor Market

Abstract

The United States combines historically high levels of income and wealth inequality with a labor market characterized by weak protections, widespread precarious employment, and an individualized, market based retirement system. At the same time, Americans are living longer than ever before, meaning that a growing share of the life course is spent in retirement. Yet the extent to which these “golden years” provide economic security varies sharply across occupational and class locations. This paper investigates how characteristics of work across the life course—especially indicators of employment precarity such as low wages, inconsistent hours, self employment, and concentration in precarious occupations—shape individuals’ retirement contributions and accumulated retirement wealth.

Drawing on ten years of Consumer Expenditure Survey (2013–2024) data, we examine two core outcomes: annual retirement contributions and total retirement account balances, capturing both short term saving capacity and long term asset accumulation. Our analysis links these outcomes to multiple dimensions of work precarity while controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, using year fixed effects to account for inflation and macroeconomic shocks. We then assess whether the association between precarious work and retirement wealth has shifted over time, estimating marginal effects to visualize emerging trends.

Theoretically, the paper situates retirement wealth within an asset based stratification framework. As defined benefit pensions have eroded and defined contribution plans have proliferated, retirement has become an individualized investment project that magnifies labor market inequalities. For older adults, wealth functions as a form of security, opportunity, status, and power; its absence deepens vulnerability and constrains agency. By integrating retirement wealth into contemporary theories of asset based class structure, we demonstrate how the U.S. retirement system operates as a stratifying institution that converts inequalities in work into cumulative (dis)advantage in later life.

Authors

• Paromita Sanyal, Florida State University

• Bennett Shepard LaBree, Florida State University

• Matthew Brooks, Florida State University