Pathways to Retirement, Well-Being, and Mandatory Retirement Rules: Evidence from Canadian Reforms

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.