Social inequalities in later working life and retirement: Causes and consequences

This thesis examines the causes and consequences of social inequalities in later working life and retirement. A large literature suggests that the risk of early retirement and poor health in the third age is unequally socially distributed, as people from lower social classes retire earlier and are more exposed to post-retirement health problems than people from higher social classes. While the existence of these empirical regularities is well documented in the literature, less is known about the social mechanisms that bring these social class differences about and how they vary across other subpopulations, such as gender and ethnicity. Based on longitudinal register and survey data from Denmark this thesis gives answers to questions such as: Why do men and women belonging to the working class retire earlier than men and women belonging to the service class? Why do non-Western immigrants have a higher risk of disability pension uptake than natives? How much can adverse working conditions from the working life explain health inequalities after retirement? What is the effect of early retirement on post-retirement health and does this effect vary by gender and social class?