Copyright 1996 by
The Cerontological Society of America
The Cerontologist
Vol. 36, No. 3, 363-372
We used the first wave of the new Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to document the
importance of transitional stages — bridge jobs — between career employment and complete
labor force withdrawal in the early 1990s. We describe the labor force status of a sample of
about 9,500 older Americans with some work experience after age 49, and the transition
patterns of those for whom we can identify a career job. We observe significant bridge job
activity, including part-time work and movement between self-employment and
wage-and-salary jobs. Subsequent waves of the HRS will permit researchers to follow this
large sample through the labor force withdrawal process and to analyze the determinants and
consequences of alternative retirement routes.
Key words: Retirement transaction, Bridge jobs, Self-employment, Part-time work
The Role of Bridge Jobs in the Retirement
Transition: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity1
Joseph F. Quinn, PhD,2 and Michael Kozy, MA2
There is considerable concern among policy analysts about the economic well-being of future generations of American retirees. Important demographic
changes are underway, including a dramatic aging of
the population and an increase in the proportion of
elderly Americans who are minorities. Both are
causes of concern — the first because of the financial
strains population aging will impose on Social Security, employer pensions, and Medicare, and the latter because minorities of all ages are disproportionately at risk of poverty (see Appendix, Note 1). One
way in which society might adjust to the problems on
the horizon is to encourage older Americans to work
longer than they now do. If this happens, there are
reasons to believe that much of the extended work
life will occur on jobs other than the individuals'
career jobs.
The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to describe the retirement patterns of the early 1990s,
using the first wave of the new Health and Retirement Study (HRS; Juster & Suzman, 1995), and (2) to
ask whether these patterns of labor market disengagement appear to differ between the white majority and minority populations more at risk; specifically, blacks and Hispanics.
Considerable research has established that for
many Americans retirement is a process, not a single
event. Many older workers use one or more transitional stages — bridge jobs — between career employment and complete labor force withdrawal. Two
common transitional stages are part-time work, usually on a new job, and self-employment.
Government statistics document the importance
of part-time work and self-employment among older
workers. Both increase dramatically with age. Although only 6% of employed men aged 25-54 work
part time (fewer than 35 hours per week), 12% of
those aged 60-61 and employed do, along with 21%
of those aged 62-64, 42% of those 65-69, and well
over half of those still working after age 70 (see
Appendix, Note 2). Among employed women, parttime work is more prevalent at all ages, but the age
differentials are similar. About 20% of employed
women aged 25-54 work part time, compared to 28%
of those 60-61, 40% of those 62-64, and over 60% of
all working women aged 65 or older. Over 85% of
those aged 60 or older who work part time say they
are doing so voluntarily, and this proportion also
rises with age.
Self-employment in the United States also increases
steadily with age, with a large jump at age 65. Nearly a
quarter of employed (nonagricultural) men aged 65
and over and 14% of those aged 55-64 are selfemployed, compared to less than 8% of employed
men aged 16-54. For women, the proportion selfemployed is smaller at all ages. It jumps from less than
6% for employed women aged 16-54 to 9% at ages 5564 and then to 16% for those 65 or older. One reason
that self-employment is more common among older
workers is that those already self-employed in their
career jobs tend to retire later than do wage and salary
workers. In addition, however, some people turn to
self-employment late in life, often as a means of gradual retirement (Quinn, 1980,1981).
Some of these part-time and self-employment jobs
are bridge jobs between career work and retirement.
The importance of bridge jobs is likely to increase in
the future, as the population ages, as life expectancies continue to increase, and as public and private
1
An earlier version of this article was presented at the HRS Early Results
Workshop on Minority Perspectives, Ann Arbor, May 25-27, 1995. We
would like to thank the Retirement Research Foundation, the Employee
Benefit Research Institute, the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment
Research and the Program for Research on Black Americans for research
support, and the members of the workshop and two anonymous referees
for very helpful comments on an earlier draft.
2
Boston College, Department of Economics. Address correspondence to
Joseph F. Quinn, Boston College, Department of Economics, Chestnut Hill,
MA 02167.
Vol.36, No. 3,1996
363
sector retirement incentives diverge. The number of
Americans aged 65 or older is projected to double by
the year 2030, while the number aged 55 to 64 increases by two-thirds. In stark contrast, the number
under 55 will remain almost unchanged. As a result,
the percentage of Americans aged 65 and over will
increase from about 13% today to nearly 22% by 2030,
with most of the increase occurring between 2010
and 2030. By then, a third of the U.S. population will
be 55 or older, and the median age will have risen
from 33 to 42 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989; U.S.
Senate, 1991).
The older population of the future will be much
more diverse racially and ethnically than are current
retirees. Although the older (65 + ) white population
is projected to grow by about 90% by the year 2030,
the older black population will increase by almost
250% and the older Hispanic population by nearly
400%. The proportion of the elderly who are minority
will increase from about 15% today to a quarter by
2030, and then to nearly a third by the year 2050 (U.S.
Senate, 1991).
Currently, elderly Hispanics are twice as likely and
elderly blacks three times as likely to be poor as are
elderly whites. For all groups, those elderly individuals who are still working are much less likely to be
poor than those already out of the labor force (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1992). Clearly, the issues of
labor force activity, race and ethnicity, and economic
well-being among the elderly are closely intertwined.
Public policy initiatives are also important. At the
federal level, changes are underway to encourage (or
at least to stop discouraging) work by older Americans. Mandatory retirement has been virtually eliminated, Social Security's normal retirement age is
scheduled to increase from 65 to 66 and eventually to
67, the amount of money that Social Security recipients can earn without reducing their benefits has
been increased, and the reward for delaying benefit
receipt beyond the normal retirement age (the delayed retirement credit) is on the rise. Some analysts
have proposed that the normal retirement age be
increased more quickly and further than currently
legislated, to 68 and then beyond, indexed to longevity, and that early eligibility for Social Security retirement benefits be delayed from age 62 to 65 (Mitchell
& Quinn, 1996, Chapters 3 & 4).
At the same time that these changes in federal
policies are encouraging additional work, many employers, through their defined-benefit private pension plans, continue to penalize work beyond particular ages. They do so with benefit calculation rules
that reduce a worker's pension wealth (the present
value of expected pension benefits) with additional
years on the job (see Appendix, Note 3). This contradictory combination of public and private sector policies (encouraging work by older Americans, but not
on their career jobs) may make gradual retirement
via bridge jobs even more prevalent than it is today.
Rational workers may leave their career jobs when
the pension incentives dictate, but continue working
with another employer or on their own.
To anticipate the issues facing future retirees, we
364
must foresee the retirement trends and patterns of
the future and understand the influence of public
policy on them. To do so, it is important to understand the exit patterns of today. How common are
bridge jobs in the 1990s? Who is likely to use them,
and why? Are there differences in labor force withdrawal patterns by race and ethnicity, differences
that might accentuate poverty risks late in life?
Much of our current knowledge about the retirement process is based on the Retirement History
Study (RHS; Irelan, 1972), an outstanding but now
outdated survey of older Americans aged 58 to 63
in 1969, whose last interview was in 1979, nearly two
decades ago. Because the RHS contained no married
women as primary respondents and had no oversampling, we know much more about the retirement pattern of white men than we do about women or minorities. The new Health and Retirement
Study (HRS) represents a significant improvement on
the RHS and a great opportunity to update and expand what we know. The HRS is current and much
more sophisticated than the RHS, it includes men
and women as primary respondents, and it oversamples blacks and Hispanics to increase their sample
sizes.
In this article, we report preliminary findings from
the initial wave (1992) of the HRS on the nature of
retirement in the early 1990s by gender, race and
ethnicity, and type of work (wage and salary vs selfemployment). We focus on the use of bridge jobs
between full-time career employment and complete
labor force withdrawal. We review briefly the literature on retirement transitions, define the sample we
have chosen for analysis, present the results, and
draw some preliminary conclusions.
Several authors have focused on the nature of the
retirement process, with emphasis on the transitional stages of partial or gradual retirement. Gustman and Steinmeier (1984), using the RHS and a
subjective definition of "partial retirement" provided by the survey respondents themselves, found
partial retirement to be widespread in the early
1970s, even among those in good health and not
subject to mandatory retirement or employer pension incentives. They estimated that about one-third
of white males would become partially retired at
some time during their working lives, and found that
partial retirement usually involved a job change.
Honig and Hanoch (1985) used the RHS and an
objective definition of partial retirement, real annual
earnings less than half the individual's highest real
annual earnings. They also found that partial retirement was important and that it tended to increase
with age: 8% of white married men aged 60 were
partially retired, as were 14% of those aged 62 and
nearly a quarter of those aged 65. Honig (1985) found
similar results with the RHS sample of nonmarried
women, one of a few studies of women. Partial retirement was quantitatively important for these women,
though less so than for men, and was of significant
duration.
Quinn, Burkhauser, and Myers (1990) used all 10
years of the RHS and focused on exit routes from
The Gerontologist
career jobs, defined as full-time jobs held for at least
10 years. They disaggregated the RHS sample by
gender and type of work, but not by race or ethnicity.
As suggested by the prior research, they found that
many older Americans did not follow the stereotypical retirement route; that is, they did not leave fulltime status on their career jobs and the labor force in
one move. Among male wage and salary workers,
more than a quarter did something else. Most of
them found a new job, evenly distributed between
full time and part time. The percentage "nontraditional" was about the same for wage and salary (nonmarried) women, although most of those who stayed
in the labor force moved to part-time work.
The self-employed followed very different retirement patterns, probably because they have more
control over the amount and kind of work they do
(Fuchs, 1982; Quinn, 1980). In the RHS, only half
went directly from their full-time career job to complete retirement (Quinn et al., 1990). Those who did
not were evenly split between part-time employment
on their own career jobs (an option rarely found in
the wage and salary sector) and part-time or full-time
work on a new job.
In the 1970s, these transitional jobs generally
lasted long enough to be interesting to researchers.
Of those older workers who switched employers,
nearly 60% were still working two years later. Most
bridge jobs were in different occupations and industries, and most involved some movement down the
socioeconomic ladder; for example, from skilled to
unskilled or from white collar to blue collar. There
was some evidence that those at the ends of the
economic spectrum — the rich and the poor — were
the most likely to use nontraditional retirement
routes (Quinn et al., 1990). The poor may be forced
to do so because they lack pension coverage and
personal savings and often are eligible for only modest Social Security benefits. The rich may do so simply because they want to, enjoying interesting jobs
with important nonpecuniary benefits.
Ruhm (1990,1991), also using the RHS, defined the
career job as the longest job held, and again found
that postcareer jobs were an important part of the
retirement process in the 1970s. For example, of
those who left their longest job between the ages of
60 and 64, 40% worked again; of those departing
between ages 65 and 69, nearly a quarter continued
to work.
The consensus from this literature is that partial or
gradual retirement, defined in a number of ways, was
an important part of the retirement transition for a
significant minority of older Americans in the 1970s.
But what has happened since then? One early
glimpse is provided by Ruhm (1995), who used data
from a 1989 Harris poll to compare men aged 58-63 in
1989 with men the same age (from the RHS) in 1969.
Not surprisingly, he found much lower age-specific
employment rates in 1989 than 20 years earlier: This
is the well-documented early retirement trend. But
he continued to find substantial bridge employment,
with about a third of the men employed in 1989
working on postcareer transitional jobs.
Vol. 36, No. 3,1996
365
Retirement routes in America are many and varied,
and the stereotypical exit from full-time work to fulltime leisure is only a part of the story. Many older
Americans (although a minority) continue to work
after they leave their career jobs, often part time
and usually on a new job and in a new line of work.
For some, this new line of work involves selfemployment. The new HRS allows us to update our
knowledge and expand it to minority populations.
Data and Sample
The initial HRS sample includes over 12,000 men
and women in about 8,000 households. The ageeligible respondents were all aged 51-61 in 1992, but
some spouses were older or younger. The HRS contains detailed information on the individuals' demographic background, health and disability status,
housing, family structure and intrafamily transfers,
current and previous employment and some earlier
job history, retirement plans (for those still working),
health and life insurance coverage, income, and
wealth.
Because we are focusing on the retirement transition, we have excluded all those with no work experience after age 49, leaving us with a sample of about
9,500 individuals. Our race/ethnicity categories are
Hispanic, black, and white (see Appendix, Note 4).
Table 1 shows the distribution by gender and race/
ethnicity. The unweighted sample is 55% male, and
75% white, 16% black, and 8% Hispanic. These numbers overstate the proportions of blacks and Hispanics in the population, because these groups were
intentionally oversampled. When sample weights
are applied, the male/female ratio stays the same, but
the race/ethnicity ratios change to 83% white, 11%
black, and 6% Hispanic.
An important variable in any study of retirement is
age, because large behavioral changes are observed
at key ages, such as 60, 62, and 65, that appear in
pension and Social Security regulations. Table 2
shows the age distributions for our sample. Note that
there are more men than women aged 62 or older,
Table 1 . Sample With Work Experience After Age 50,
by Gender and Race/Ethnicity, Weighted and Unweighted
%
Weighted
Number
%
Unweighted
Total
White
Black
Hispanic
9529
7176
1551
802
100%
75.3
16.3
8.4
100%
83.4
10.8
5.8
Males
White
Black
Hispanic
5257
4060
737
460
55.2
42.6
7.7
4.8
55.5
47.1
5.2
3.3
Females
White
Black
Hispanic
4272
3116
814
342
44.8
32.7
8.5
3.6
44.5
36.3
5.7
2.5
Sample
Source: 1992 Health and Retirement Study (see Juster & Suzman,
1995).
Table 2. Age Distribution, Unweighted,' by Gender and Race/Ethnicity (Vertical Percentage)
Men
Women
Age
White
Black
Hispanic
Total
White
Black
Hispanic
Total
Total
50-54
55-57
58-59
60-61
62-64
65 +
30%
22
14
14
11
9
31%
23
16
13
7
10
37%
19
12
13
8
11
31%
22
14
13
11
9
39%
25
16
16
2
1
38%
27
17
15
2
42%
26
14
15
2
b
b
39%
26
16
16
2
1
35%
24
15
15
7
6
Total
4,060
737
460
5,257
3,116
814
342
4,272
9,529
Source: 1992 Health and Retirement Study (see Juster & Suzman, 1995).
a
The weighted and unweighted distributions are virtually identical.
b
Less than 0.5%
because women are more likely than men to have
older spouses.
There are other important differences by race and
ethnicity. Blacks and Hispanics have lower levels of
education, lower wages, and jobs with lower socioeconomic status than do whites. A quarter of the
white men in this sample have a college degree,
compared to only 10% of the black and Hispanic
men. Among women, the differences are less dramatic; the analogous proportions are 18,14, and 7%
(see Appendix, Note 5).
As would be expected given the educational differences, the male wage distributions differ by race and
ethnicity. Well over half of the employed Hispanic
men and over 40% of the black men earn below $10/
hour, compared to less than 30% of the white men.
The women in this sample tend to earn less than the
men, especially when they are not disaggregated by
full-time/part-time status. The wage distributions for
white and black women are remarkably similar, given
the educational differences, and are higher than for
the Hispanic women.
A similar story appears in the occupational distributions. Whites are about twice as likely to hold
managerial, professional, technical, sales, and administrative jobs than are either blacks or Hispanics,
and this is true for men and for women. Black and
Hispanic men, on the other hand, are much more
likely to be operators, fabricators, and laborers.
Over 40% of these black women and over a third of
the Hispanic women are service workers (which includes private household and personal service occupations), compared to only 17% of the white women.
The net result of these socioeconomic differences
on retirement patterns is unclear. As mentioned earlier, prior research suggests that those at the ends of
the socioeconomic spectrum were the most likely to
use nontraditional retirement patterns in the 1970s.
Whites tend to be the most well-off, and blacks and
Hispanics are overrepresented among those least
well-off.
Health is another very important variable in the
retirement literature, and one with significant differences by race and ethnicity. Whites in this sample are
much more likely than either blacks or Hispanics to
describe their health as excellent or very good, and
much less likely to report fair or poor. For example,
366
less than 15% of the whites claimed their health was
fair or poor, compared to almost 30% of the blacks
and Hispanics.
Results and Discussion
Current Labor Force Status
One focus of this research is the prevalence of
part-time work as a transitional stage between fulltime career employment and complete labor force
withdrawal. The definition of part time is arbitrary.
We choose to define it relatively narrowly, less than
1,600 hours per year, lest we discover bridge jobs
that are really not there. This definition of part time
excludes someone working 35 hours per week (the
standard definition of a minimum full-time week) for
46 or more weeks per year, someone working 40
hours per week for as few as 40 weeks (e.g., a construction worker with some weeks off between jobs),
or someone reporting as few as 31 hours per week
for the full 52 weeks of the year (including weeks of
paid vacation). When we looked at those working
just below full time by this definition (between 1,400
and 1,600 hours per year), we found that a large
proportion (primarily women) were in the education
industry (mostly in elementary and secondary
schools; a few in colleges and universities), reporting full-time hours per week but just for the academic year. This is certainly not part-time, retirement-transition work in the sense we mean, so we
have included in our definition of full-time 111 individuals in the education industry with annual hours
as few as 1,400.
Table 3 shows the current employment status of
the sample. Overall, 78% were working at the time of
the 1992 survey and 22% were not (this table and all
the following figures are based on weighted data).
Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be without
a job than were whites. Among those working, white
men were the most likely to be self-employed; a
quarter were, compared to 18 and 14% of blacks and
Hispanics, respectively. The proportion of women
who were self-employed was significantly lower than
that of men. Finally, there were large differences in
full-time/part-time status by gender, but only modest
ones by race and ethnicity. White men were slightly
The Gerontologist
more likely to be working full time than either blacks
or Hispanics, while blacks were the most likely to be
full time among the women (see Appendix, Note 6).
When annual hours per year are calculated, two
differences stand out. Black and Hispanic men were
much more likely than white men to work the standard 2,000-2,100-hour year; 44% and 50% did, respectively, compared to only about a third of the white
men. Most of the difference appears in the highest
annual hours categories. White men in this sample
were more likely to be working 2,100-2,500 hours
and more than 2,500 hours per year. To some extent,
this reflects the larger proportion of self-employed,
who traditionally report long hours, but the difference remains within the wage and salary population
as well.
In Figure 1, we categorize all individuals as either
working full time, working part time, or not working,
disaggregate by age, gender, and race/ethnicity. The
general decline in full-time employment with age
and the analogous increase in the proportion of
those not working can be seen for all groups, especially at the key Social Security ages of 62 and 65. The
age-specific data on part-time work are erratic, reflecting the small number of blacks and Hispanics in
this category when the sample is also disaggregated
by gender and age.
Blacks approaching the age of initial Social Security eligibility (ages 55-61) are less likely to be working full time and more likely to be without a job than
whites. The experience of the smaller number of
Hispanics tends to fall in between. Part-time work is
more important for these women than for the men,
but there are no consistent patterns by race/ethnicity
(see Appendix, Note 7). Whether these part-time
jobs are part of a retirement transition or reflect a
career of part-time employment remains to be seen.
The self-descriptions of those who are not currently employed differ significantly by gender and
age. The youngest men without a job are about
evenly distributed among retired, disabled, and
unemployed/laid off (Figure 2). The proportion describing themselves as "retired" increases steadily
from 29% at ages 50-54 to over 90% by age 65, while
the proportion "unemployed" drops from about
one-third to only 2% by age 62. The "disabled" selfdescription stays important (25-30%) through ages
60-61, and then drops precipitously at age 62. For
women without a job, "homemaker" and "retired"
are the most common self-descriptions, with the
sum rising from about half (at ages 50-54) to threequarters (at ages 60-61), and then even higher for the
small number of women aged 62 and over.
These data suggest that health and labor market
difficulties may be important in explaining the
(sometimes involuntary) labor force status of the
younger members of this sample. For older workers,
however, voluntary departures and, we suspect, the
importance of specific retirement incentives are
likely to dominate.
The Process of Retirement
The primary focus of this research is on how older
workers exit the labor force. We will describe this for
two samples, all those with work experience after age
49 (the sample used thus far), and then the subset for
whom we can identify a full-time career job.
We have defined a full-time career job as one that a
worker has held for 10 or more years, on which he or
she is working full time. A bridge job, therefore,
could be a part-time job of any duration or a full-time
job of less than 10 years' duration.
One problem is that some full-time workers are on
jobs that currently look like short-duration bridge
jobs, but that will turn out to be career jobs (that is,
with tenure of 10 or more years) by the time the
workers eventually leave them. A likely case would
be a 51-year-old with 9 years tenure on a full-time
job. It is highly unlikely that this will turn out to be a
bridge job by our definition, although it would be
defined as one at the time of the survey. One purpose of this research is to derive some early estimates of the importance of bridge jobs in the retirement processes of the 1990s. Because a majority of
the sample has not yet retired, we have to make
some assumptions about future behavior in order to
derive these estimates. To use current tenure implicitly assumes that all workers are just about to leave
their jobs. This is a poor oversimplification and
would lead to an overestimate of bridge job activity.
A better oversimplification, and the one we adopt
here, is to assume that full-time workers remain on
their current jobs until age 62. We pick age 62 be-
Table 3. Current Work Status by Gender and Race/Ethnicity (Percentages)
Men
Age
Women
White
Black
Hispanic
Total
White
Black
Hispanic
Total
Total
Working
Not working
78%
22
71%
29
73%
27
77%
23
79%
21
76%
24
72%
28
78%
22
78%
22
Of those working
Wage and salary
Self-employed
75
25
82
18
86
14
76
24
85
15
93
7
83
17
86
14
81
19
85
13
2
81
15
4
82
14
3
85
14
2
69
29
1
72
26
2
69
29
2
70
29
1
78
21
2
Full-time
Part-time
Unknown
Source: 1992 Health and Retirement Study (see Juster & Suzman, 1995).
Vol. 36, No. 3,1996
367
•
Full-Time — Males
Blacks
•
Full-Time — Females
Q Whites
Q Hispanic:
50-54
55-57
58-59
Backs
QwNus
•
Hbpmlcs
60-61
Age Categories
Part-Time — Males
50-54
55-57
58-59
Part-Time — Females
60-61
50-54
55-57
50-54
55-57
56-59
60-61
62-64
58-59
60-61
62-64
65*
Age Categories
Dttspmics
50-54
55-57
58-59
60-61
62-64
Age Categories
Age Categories
Figure 1. Current job status by gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Source: Health and Retirement Study Wave II (see Juster & Suzman,
1995).
cause it is the most important single age of retirement transition (see Appendix, Note 8). We then
classify the jobs as career or bridge depending on
their (assumed) eventual tenure. This may lead to an
underestimate of bridge job activity, because we
miss those who will leave before age 62 with less than
10 years' tenure, but who would have had 10 years or
more had they actually stayed until 62. At this stage,
we adopt a conservative stance, preferring to underestimate than overestimate the importance of the
bridge job phenomenon. Of course, these problems
will disappear as the sample ages and retires in future
waves of the HRS.
Some workers, of course, have already left the
labor force or are employed part time. We can and
do describe how they got where they are. The problem here is that these workers are not a random
368
sample of the population (they tend to be people
who left their career jobs early) and therefore do not
necessarily provide accurate estimates of what the
entire population will do. Again, subsequent waves
of the HRS will eliminate this problem.
Current Job Status and History. — Figures 3 and 4
show the 1992 status of our entire sample of 9,529
respondents with work experience after age 49.
Nearly 60% of the men are currently working on what
is or what will become a career job (Figure 3). We will
have to observe them over time to see how they
retire. Nearly a quarter of the men are not working at
all, and we can observe the details of their departure.
The remainder (16%) are working on bridge jobs; of
these, two-thirds are employed part time, and the
others are on jobs that will have less than 10 years
The Gerontologist
Reasons Not Working - Males, by Age
16%
working, bridge job
N - 5257
N* - 4094.25
worked since age 50
50-54
55-57
56-59
60-61
62-64
65*
Age Categories
23%
not working
Reasons Not Working - Females, by Age
Figure 3. Current job status, males. N* = weighted observations. Source: Health and Retirement Study Wave I (see Juster &
Suzman, 1995).
28%
working, bridge job
Age Categories
Figure 2. Reasons for not working, by gender and age. Source:
Health and Retirement Study Wave II (see Juster & Suzman, 1995).
N - 4272
N* - 3277.75
worked since age 50
duration when they reach age 62 (see Appendix,
Note 9).
When we look at the previous jobs of the men
currently working part time, we find that the vast
majority of those with good data on the previous job
worked full time before that (see Appendix, Note 10).
This is a classic bridge-job scenario, from full time to
part time. Of those working on full-time but shortduration jobs, nearly all were full time previously.
When we look back in time at the 23% of men
without a job in 1992, about two-thirds had left directly from a career job, and a third last worked on a
bridge job.
The experiences of the women in this sample are
very different, and statistically so at the .01 level
(Figure 4). Although the proportion of women not
working is almost identical to that of the men, the
working women are less likely to be employed on a
full-time career job (49% versus 59% of males) and
much more likely to be on a bridge job (28% versus
16%). Those not working are much more likely to
have last worked on a bridge job (two-thirds did
versus one-third of the men). In all cases, a higher
proportion of the women's bridge jobs were part
time (rather than short duration) than was the case
for the men.
There are some statistically significant differences
by race/ethnicity in addition to those noted in Table
3. Bridge jobs are more common among Hispanic
men than among white or black men. For example, of
those not working, 54% of Hispanic men last worked
on a bridge job, compared to only about one-third of
whites and blacks. Of those currently working on a
part-time job, one-fifth of the Hispanic men also
Vol. 36, No. 3,1996
22%
not working
Figure 4. Current job status, females. N* = weighted observations. Source: Health and Retirement Study Wave I (see Juster &
Suzman, 1995).
worked part time on their previous jobs, compared
to only 12 and 15% of the whites and blacks. For
some, in fact, employment may be a series of
"bridge-like jobs" that may or may not signify anything about retirement transition (see next section).
Although bridge jobs are more important for
women than for men, they are less important for
black women than for either white or Hispanic
women. Only 23% of these black women are on
bridge jobs, compared to about 30% of the whites
and Hispanics. Of the women without a job, only
59% of the black women came from a bridge job,
compared to 68 and 75% of the whites and Hispanics.
How much bridge job activity do we observe in this
snapshot? Among the approximately one-quarter of
the sample not working, a great deal — about onethird of the men and two-thirds of the women without a job — last worked on a bridge job. Among the
approximately three-quarters who are still working,
there is also considerable bridge job activity — onefifth of the employed men and one-third of the employed women are working on jobs that are either
369
bridge
part time or will have less than 10 years' duration
even if they work until age 62. If our "age 62" assumption turns out to be true for everyone, 25% of
the men and 40% of the women in this sample will
have last worked on a bridge job when they leave the
labor force. Although calculation of the exact proportion must await later waves of the HRS, it is clear
that the proportion will represent a significant minority of the population.
Career Job Status. — For some workers, life may be
a series of part-time or short-duration jobs. If so, the
ones observed late in life may not represent any
change in the pattern, and we might be misled into
seeing retirement transition when none in fact exists.
We would certainly not describe a part-time or shortduration job at age 35 as evidence of gradual retirement; for some, we should be careful of doing so at
later ages as well.
To concentrate on those for whom a bridge job
would represent a change, we focus here on only
those for whom we can identify a full-time career job,
and then observe the transitions from these jobs. By
looking at current, last, and prior jobs, we can identify a full-time career job for 86% of the (weighted)
men and 63% of the (weighted) women with work
experience after age 49. Among the men, we lose a
much higher percentage of the blacks (19%) and the
Hispanics (30%) than we do the whites (13%); among
the women, we lose nearly half of the Hispanics but
only about one-third of the whites and blacks.
In Figures 5 and 6, we describe the transition status
as of 1992 of these "career" men and women, assuming again that all those currently working full time
will continue to do so until age 62. The vast majority
were still working on their career jobs in 1992, and
we will follow their departure patterns over time. Of
those who had left their career jobs, however, nearly
half moved to a bridge job rather than directly out of
the labor force, and the proportions were nearly
identical for career men and women. The differences
by race were also much smaller than were observed
in the larger sample. It is too early to draw strong
conclusions from these early movers, but the data do
suggest that bridge job activity is important even
among those with long-term career jobs, that much
of the difference between the withdrawal patterns of
men and women is due to the lower proportion of
women with a full-time, long-duration career job,
and that some of the differences observed by race/
ethnicity are due to the differential likelihood of
having a career job late in life.
4%
career - bridge - out
Figure 5. Career job status, males. N* = weighted observations.
Source: Health and Retirement Study Wave I (see Juster & Suzman,1995).
bridge
career - bridge - out
Figure 6. Career job status, females. N* = weighted observations. Source: Health and Retirement Study Wave I (see Juster &
Suzman, 1995).
activity (among those with a transition) was about the
same for the two groups, and both exhibited considerable cross-over. Of the career wage and salary
workers already on another job, more than a quarter
had moved to self-employment, as did 10% of those
who used a bridge job on the way out (Figure 7).
These may be workers searching for a new line of
work or the flexible hours unavailable on their career
jobs. Of the much smaller number of career selfemployed who switched jobs, over half moved to a
wage and salary job. Despite this higher proportion,
there is a net influx into self-employment because of
the much higher number of wage and salary workers.
Summary
Wage and Salary Versus Self-Employed Workers. — The results from the 1992 wave of the HRS can only
suggest what the longitudinal data will reveal, but the
In Figures 7 and 8, we disaggregate the career sample
preliminary results are intriguing.
in another way, to see whether there are differences
• There is a wide variety of retirement behaviors
in the transition patterns of wage and salary (W&S)
to be studied, even within narrowly defined age
and self-employed (SE) workers, and whether workgroups.
ers switch status on the way out.
• Bridge jobs continue to provide an important
As expected, career wage and salary workers were
intermediate step in the retirement processes of a
significantly more likely to be out of the labor force;
significant minority of older Americans.
19% were out by 1992, compared to only 10% of the
career self-employed. The prevalence of bridge job
• Despite cross-overs in both directions, there is a
370
The Gerontologist
71%
still on career job
career - bridge • out
Figure 7. Career job status, wage and salary workers. N* =
weighted observations. Source: Health and Retirement Study
Wave I (see Juster & Suzman, 1995).
as necessarily being evidence of gradual labor force
withdrawal.
• Much of the difference in retirement patterns by
gender and some of the differences by race/ethnicity
disappear when we concentrate only on those with a
full-time, long-duration career job, suggesting that
analysis of employment pattern prior to retirement
may be an important component of understanding
eventual labor force withdrawal.
The retirement patterns of older Americans are far
from simple. Although the majority do leave their
career jobs and the labor market simultaneously, a
significant minority use bridge jobs to retire more
gradually. Second careers are a common phenomenon. As the nation ages and as changes in federal
policy, including Social Security, reduce the work
disincentives facing older Americans, these rich and
varied retirement routes are likely to become all the
more prevalent and important.
References
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males. Journal of Human Resources, 17, 339-357.
Custman, A. A., & Steinmeier, T. L. (1984). Partial retirement and the
analysis of retirement behavior. Industrial and Labor Relations Review,
37r 403-415.
Honig, M. (1985). Partial retirement among women. Journal of Human
Resources, 20, 613-621.
Honig, M., & Hanoch, G. (1985). Partial retirement as a separate mode of
retirement behavior. Journal of Human Resources, 20, 21-46.
Irelan, L. M. (1972). Retirement History Survey: Introduction. Social Security Bulletin, 35(11), 3-8.
Juster, F.T.,& Suzman, R. (1995). An overview of the Health and Retirement
Survey. The Journal of Human Resources, 30, S7-S56.
84%
still on career job
Mitchell, O.S.,&Quinn,J. F. (1996). Final report of the Technical Panel on
74%
W&S
career - bridge - out
Figure 8. Career job status, self-employed workers. N* =
weighted observations. Source: Health and Retirement Study
Wave I (see Juster & Suzman, 1995).
net inflow of workers into self-employment late in
life, perhaps as a means of acquiring flexible hours
and retiring gradually.
• Women are more likely than men to utilize
bridge jobs.
• There are significant differences in current labor
force status by race and ethnicity, with blacks or
Hispanics less likely than whites to be employed in
the years approaching traditional retirement age.
• Although there are differences in how people
leave the labor force by race and ethnicity, they do
not fall into an obvious pattern. In this initial HRS
wave, Hispanic men are more likely than other men
to be on a bridge job or to have last worked on a
bridge job; among women, blacks are the least likely
to have done so. The implications of this are as yet
unclear.
• Hispanic men and women and black men are
more likely than the other groups to have a series of
jobs with "bridge" characteristics, suggesting caution when interpreting a bridge job, even late in life,
Vol. 36, No. 3,1996
Trends and Issues in Retirement Savings. Washington, DC: Advisory
Council on Social Security. (Also University of Pennsylvania, Aging
Research Center, Working Paper WPS 95-06.)
Quinn, J. F. (1980). Labor-force participation patterns of older selfemployed workers. Social Security Bulletin, 43(4), 17-28.
Quinn, J. F. (1981). The extent and correlates of partial retirement. The
Cerontologist, 21, 634-643.
Quinn, J. F., & Burkhauser, R. V. (1994). Retirement and the labor force
participation of the elderly. In L. C. Martin & S. H. Preston (Eds.), The
demography of aging (pp. 50-101). Washington, DC: The National
Academy Press.
Quinn, J. F., Burkhauser, R. V., & Myers, D. A. (1990). Passing the torch: The
influence of economic incentives on work and retirement. Kalamazoo,
M l : Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Ruhm, C. J. (1990). Bridge jobs and partial retirement. Journal of Labor
Economics, 8, 482-501.
Ruhm, C. J. (1991). Career employment and job stopping. Industrial Relations, 30,193-208.
Ruhm, C. J. (1995). Secular changes in the work and retirement patterns of
older men. Journal of Human Resources, 30, 362-385.
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Received January 2, 1996
Accepted February 2, 1996
Appendix
Notes
1. A recent review of current demographic and labor
market trends, and their implications for the economic
371
well-being of future retirees, can be found in Mitchell
and Quinn (1996, Chapter 2).
These numbers are based on unpublished Bureau of
Labor Statistics data on the nonagricultural workforce
that include more age detail than is available in the
tables published in Employment and Earnings.
This occurs when the future benefit increases that
follow additional years of work on the job are insufficient to make up for the pension benefits initially
foregone. For a discussion of these financial incentives
and their effects, see Quinn and Burkhauser (1994).
These categories are derived from 2 HRS questions.
Individuals are asked whether they consider themselves
Hispanic or Latino, and then whether they consider
themselves White/Caucasian, Black/African American,
American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific
Islander, or Other. We categorized all those who answered "yes" to the Hispanic/Latino question as Hispanic, and (almost all) the rest as either black or white.
There are about 200 Asians and American Indians who
consider themselves neither black, white, nor Hispanic,
and they are also excluded from this analysis.
The wide disparities within this Hispanic population
stand out in the educational distributions. Over 40% of
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
these older Hispanics report having no more than an
8th grade education (and over a third have only 0-7
years), while a very different 8% have college or postgraduate degrees. About two-thirds of the Hispanics in
the sample are Mexican-Americans, 10% are Cubans,
7% are Puerto-Rican, 6% are Spanish, and the remainder are Central or South American or other.
All these differences are statistically significant at the
0.05 level (and most at the 0.01 level), except for the
full-time, part-time differences among the women.
The full-time, part-time, not working differences are
statistically different at the 0.01 level for men; for
women, the differences are only significant at the 0.10
level.
In 1994, 71% of all new Social Security recipients were
aged 62-64, with the vast majority aged 62 (Social
Security Administration, 1995, Table 6.A3.)
A small number (less than 2% of the men and 1 % of the
women) did not provide enough information to determine whether they were working full-time or parttime, or what their current job tenure was.
The HRS asked about prior jobs that lasted at least 5
years. Some of those with no prior job history may
have had prior jobs that lasted less than 5 years.
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