Three Essays on Bridge Jobs of American Midlife Workers
2023-06
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Three Essays on Bridge Jobs of American Midlife Workers
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2023-06
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The prolonged longevity has not only increased the duration of work lives but also the number of choices for the processes of retirement transition. One of the common options for these processes is called bridge jobs, defined as any paid labor market activities that connect one’s career and complete withdrawal from the labor force. While the increasing need for studies on bridge jobs, there are relatively few studies done from an economic perspective.In this dissertation, I mainly focused on bridge jobs as an important phase of the work lives that older workers go through. The first two chapters investigated the effects of switching occupations in later life, as bridge jobs, on retirement and health outcomes of American midlife workers. I distinguish occupational switching into two types: (1) switching to physically more demanding occupations and (2) switching to physically less demanding occupations. To explain the differences in the outcomes between the two types of occupational switching, I integrated the concepts of the two economics models: the Grossman model of health demand and the theory of compensating wage differential. I used the Health and Retirement Study and two-way fixed effects event study regression to complete the analyses. The results are consistent with the theoretical predictions. First, switching to physically less demanding occupations reduces the probability of complete retirement and improves physical health outcomes. Second, switching to physically more demanding occupations reduces the probability of complete retirement only if it involves wage raise, Last, switching to physically more demanding occupations deteriorates the physical health outcomes if it involves wage reduction. These studies contribute to the retirement literature by reemphasizing the importance of job characteristics, such as physical demandingness, which matters in older workers’ retirement transition.
In the last chapter, I investigated the effect of occupational licensing on the decision of having bridge jobs. Occupational licensing is known to have several impacts on the labor market through its supply restriction, training and investment, and higher wages and fringe benefits. Extending these impacts to the labor market of older workers who are at the time of leaving their career jobs, I analyzed how being licensed affects the choices of bridge jobs during the process of retirement transitions. To conduct this study, I used the IPUMS Current Population Study and the Survey of Income and Program Participation and used coarsened exact matching and propensity score matching to obtain the effect of occupational licensing. The results are also consistent with the theoretical predictions. Licensed workers are less likely to choose any bridge jobs that involve the loss of career job advantages - occupation-specific human capital and tenure effect - such as switching occupations or leaving career job employers while they are more likely to choose bridge jobs that do not involve such loss: reducing work hours within the same occupation and employer. This is one of the first studies that evaluate the impact of public policies that are not directly related to retirement, such as Social Security and Medicare, on the process of retirement transition.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. June 2023. Major: Applied Economics. Advisors: Elizabeth Davis, Morris Kleiner. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 101 pages.
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Oh, Yun taek. (2023). Three Essays on Bridge Jobs of American Midlife Workers. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/258637.
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