Amid the aging workforce, a better understanding of the retirement transition patterns of older workers has implications for public policy. Such transitions are often characterized as complex trajectories involving multiple stages and alternative pathways which, in turn, depend on labor market regulations. This study investigates the factors affecting bridge employment and partial retirement and their subsequent effects on health, well-being and financial security, using micro-level data from a national healthy aging survey and augmented with personal income tax records. The analysis exploits policy-induced changes in retirement status arising from the elimination of mandatory retirement rules in Canada—which occurred at different times across provinces—in an instrumental variables design. The results indicate, first, that mandatory retirement is not used often by employers even when it is permissible: only approximately 7% of current retirees report that their first retirement occurred for this reason. This finding is consistent with limited international evidence on how employers use these rules. Second, we find supportive evidence that the elimination of mandatory retirement reduced the likelihood of individuals being retired by approximately 7–16% but raised the likelihood of subjective partial retirement by 5–6%. Most notably, the reforms reduced the incidence of work after retirement as workers become permitted to stay in their incumbent jobs longer, this finding being very robust across several statistical estimators commonly used in the related literature. No discernible effects are observed on individuals’ health, well-being or future financial security. These findings suggest that costs of mandatory retirement are limited to adjustment frictions among individuals searching for new work or entering retirement earlier than desired under the prevailing wage.

中文翻译：

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退休、幸福和强制性退休规则的途径：来自加拿大改革的证据

在劳动力老龄化的情况下，更好地了解老年工人的退休过渡模式会对公共政策产生影响。这种转变通常被描述为涉及多个阶段和替代途径的复杂轨迹，而这些又取决于劳动力市场法规。本研究使用来自全国健康老龄化调查的微观数据并增加了个人所得税记录，调查了影响过渡就业和部分退休的因素及其对健康、福祉和财务安全的后续影响。该分析在工具变量设计中利用了由于加拿大取消强制性退休规则而引起的退休状态变化（这些变化发生在各省的不同时间）。结果表明，首先，即使在允许的情况下，雇主也不经常使用强制退休：只有大约 7% 的当前退休人员报告说他们的第一次退休是出于这个原因。这一发现与关于雇主如何使用这些规则的有限国际证据一致。其次，我们发现支持性证据表明，取消强制退休使个人退休的可能性降低了约 7-16%，但将主观部分退休的可能性提高了 5-6%。最值得注意的是，改革减少了退休后工作的发生率，因为允许工人在其现有工作中停留更长时间，这一发现在相关文献中常用的几个统计估计量中非常可靠。没有观察到对个人健康的明显影响，福祉或未来的财务安全。这些研究结果表明，强制退休的成本仅限于寻找新工作或在现行工资下比预期提前退休的个人之间的调整摩擦。