Toward a new framework for comparative analyses of retirement

Abstract Retirement has historically been represented in research as a specific state characterised by a discrete shift from full-time work to full labour market exit, often at age 65. Recent research, however, increasingly recognises the complexity in the pathways people take into retirement, such as shifts to part-time work, changing employers, or returning to the labour market (unretirement). Moreover, the options available to people are shaped by institutional, social, and individual-level factors, raising questions about how retirement can be modelled in quantitative studies while retaining comparability. This presentation outlines a new conceptual framework for understanding retirement transitions, aimed at improving the operationalisation of retirement for cross-national comparative work. Informed by both established and emergent theories, it draws on lessons from efforts to harmonise retirement pathways for analyses of data in Sweden, Denmark, England, and the United States. We highlight how different policy contexts create variations that must be accounted for in comparative analyses of retirement, such as access to financial benefits for sickness absence or disability, different eligibility ages for the statutory pension, or actuarial adjustments for later uptake of pensions. With increasing research on the role of factors like job exposures and health on labour market exit, these institutional features-as well as normative expectations around retirement-must be considered. This is important in the context of comparative research to support efforts to extend working lives. Too often, analytical definitions of retirement vary across studies, the comparability of effect estimates is overstated, and the policy levers shaping behaviour are inconsistently operationalised. Retirement should be understood not as a status change, but as a process-one mediated by access to benefits, structural constraints, and cultural norms-that can be consistently assessed in future studies.