Early Retirement in a Period of High Unemployment

Abstract

ABSTRACTEarly retirement is a policy for tackling unemployment which is popular among unions, employers and government, but there has been little recent research on its social implications for the individuals concerned. This article examines the reasons given by older men for retiring early and investigates the extent of income poverty in early retirement. Particular attention is paid to how early retirement is defined and to the differences between the early retired, the sick and the unemployed. Using data for men aged 60–64 from the General Household Survey for the years 1980–82 and from the Labour Force Survey of 1983, it is shown that ill-health is a less important reason for retirement than previous studies have suggested and that those who retire early are divided by class, with manual workers being more likely to retire early because of redundancy and more likely to be living on very low incomes than non-manual workers.