What governs labour force participation in later life and why is it so different across countries? Health and labour force participation in older ages are not strongly linked, but we observe a large variation across countries in old-age labour force participation. This points to the important role of country-specific regulations governing pension receipt and old-age labour force participation. In addition to the statutory eligibility age for a pension, such country-specific regulations include: earnings tests that limit the amount of earnings when pension benefits are received; the amount of benefit deductions for early retirement; the availability of part-time pensions before normal retirement; special regulations that permit early retirement for certain population groups; and either subsidies or extra costs for employers if they keep older employees in their labour force. This paper asks two questions: Can we link a relatively low labour force participation at ages 60–64 to country-specific regulations that make early retirement attractive? and Can we link a relatively high labour force participation at ages 65–74 to country-specific regulations that make late retirement attractive? To answer these questions, we compared the experiences in a set of developed countries around the world in order to understand better the impact of country-specific rules and laws on work and retirement behaviour at older ages and, by consequence, on the financial sustainability of pension systems.

The literature on socio-economic variations in the association between retirement timing and health is inconclusive and largely limited to the moderating role of occupation. By selecting the sample case of Mexico where a sizeable number of older adults have no or very little formal education, this study allows the moderating role of education to be tested properly. Drawing on panel data for 2,430 individuals age 50 and over from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) and combining propensity score matching models with fixed-effects regressions, this article investigates differences in the health effects of retirement timing between older adults with varying years of education. Subjective health is measured using a self-reported assessment of respondents’ overall health and physical health as a reverse count of doctor-diagnosed chronic diseases. The results indicate that early transitions into retirement are associated with worse health outcomes, but education fully compensates for the detrimental association with subjective and physical health, while adjusting for baseline health, demographics and socio-economic characteristics. In conclusion, formal education during childhood and adolescence is associated with a long-term protective effect on health. It attenuates negative health consequences of early retirement transitions. Policies and programmes promoting healthy and active ageing would benefit from considering the influence of formal education in shaping older adults’ health after the transition into retirement.

The phase of retirement has been steadily growing since the 1950s. Rules and regulations related to retirement have been changing. Recent cohorts have reached this phase in better health than previous ones. Until recently, retirement has been rather void of societal expectations, leaving room for individual decisions regarding amount and type of activity. Thus, investigating activity patterns displayed during this life phase, their predictors and outcomes seems overdue. The study addresses three questions: (a) Which distinct clusters of productive activities among retirees can be identified in Germany? (b) Do activity patterns of clusters follow complementary or substitutive composition rules? (c) Which are the most important predictors of cluster membership? Using probability-based sample data (N = 2,141) from the survey ‘Transitions and Old Age Potential’ (TOP), this study investigated clusters of productive activities among retirees aged 60–70 years in Germany. The activities examined included paid work after retirement, formal and informal volunteering, child care and care-giving. Results showed a four-cluster structure. The clusters (Multiple Engagers, Volunteers, Family Helpers and Family Disengagers) differed with regard to the composition and the intensity of productive activities. Both complementary and substitutive relations were identified within clusters. Individual, familial and economic resources were predictors of cluster membership. Results are discussed with regard to role theory, cumulative inequality theory and the ongoing debate about old-age potential.

In contrast to the PASTOR model by Kalisch et al. we point to the potential negative long-term effects of positive (re)appraisals of events for resilience. This perspective posits that emotional reactions to events provide important guidelines as to which events, environments, or social relations should be sought out and which ones should be avoided in the future.

This study reviews theory and results from developmental psychology to examine age differences in workplace achievement goals. We investigated whether goal level decreases with age and, by comparing the relative strength of different goals within individuals, we examined whether dominant achievement goals are related to age. In a large sample of employees (N=747), older workers' higher affective commitment and intrinsic motivation compensated for age-related decline in the importance of achievement goals. Whether learning-approach and learning-avoidance were dominant goals was not related to age but instead to skill level, affective commitment and intrinsically satisfying work. Dominant performance-approach goals were more common among males. Performance-avoidance was most likely to be a dominant goal among older males. Moreover, with age, performance-goal orientations had increasingly maladaptive consequences for self-efficacy and affect at work.

The goal of this article is to explore the utility of integrating two lines of research on questions of modifiability or plasticity of human development. The first line, dealing with the notion of resilience, originated within the field of clinical developmental research. The second line, concerned with developmental reserve capacity, evolved primarily within the field of life-span developmental psychology. Resilience addresses questions of maintenance and recovery of adaptation in the face of stress. In addition, ideas about levels of reserve capacity, rooted in life-span developmental psychology, emphasize the potential for growth. A review of research in the areas of cognitive and self-related functioning provides evidence for resilience as well as developmental reserve capacity in adulthood and old age. It is argued that across the life span reserve capacity is increasingly allocated to resilience-related processes (maintenance of functioning and recovery from dysfunction) rather than growth. A model of successful aging is discussed which suggests that, by means of selective optimization with compensation, old age nevertheless continues to hold the potential for selective growth.

Empirical studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and communications science have investigated images of older people in the mass media, but analyses to date have failed systematically to apply gerontological concepts and to compare the portrayal of old age with ‘real-world’ evidence. A model of older people's internal and external resources was used to assess the portrayal of older people in prime-time television drama series. Three hours of programmes broadcast over six weeks in 2001 of 32 prime-time television series on the four German networks with the largest market shares were examined. The age of 355 portrayed characters were estimated, and the socio-economic, health-related and psychological resources of the 30 characters rated as 60 years or older were assessed. Observational categories and rating dimensions were developed on the basis of the resource model. Older people were heavily under-represented, especially women and those of advanced old age. Furthermore, the representation of older people's social participation and financial resources was overly positive. Finally, older women and men were portrayed in traditional gender roles. The antecedents and consequences of the biased portrayals (of old and young people) are discussed from a psychological perspective.