Older Women’s Labor Market Attachment, Retirement Planning, and Household Debt
Older Women’s Labor Market Attachment, Retirement Planning, and Household Debt
Using data from both the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), we show that older women’s current and intended future labor force attachment patterns changed over time. Specifically, compared with our 1992 HRS baseline, more recent cohorts of women in their fifties and sixties are more likely to plan to work longer. When we explore the reasons for delayed retirement among older women, factors include their gaining more education, having more marital disruption, and having had fewer children than prior cohorts. But household finances also play a key role, in that older women today have more debt than previously and are more financially fragile than in the past. The NFCS data show that factors associated with retirement planning include having more education and greater financial literacy. Those who report excessive amounts of debt and are financially fragile are the least financial literate, had more dependent children, and experienced income shocks. Thus shocks do play a role in older women’s debt status. But it is not enough to have resources: people also need the capacity to manage those resources, if they are to stay out of debt as they head into retirement.
Keywords: debt, financial fragility, retirement, work longer, debt management
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
