title: Precarious employment, bad jobs, labor unions, and early retirement.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We examined the extent to which involuntary job loss, exposure to "bad jobs," and labor union membership across the life course are associated with the risk of early retirement.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, a large (N=8,609) sample of men and women who graduated from high school in 1957, we estimated discrete-time event history models for the transition to first retirement through age 65. We estimated models separately for men and women.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found that experience of involuntary job loss and exposure to bad jobs are associated with a lower risk of retiring before age 65, whereas labor union membership is associated with a higher likelihood of early retirement. These relationships are stronger for men than for women and are mediated to some extent by pre-retirement differences in pension eligibility, wealth, job characteristics, and health.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Results provide some support for hypotheses derived from theories of cumulative stratification, suggesting that earlier employment experiences should influence retirement outcomes indirectly through later-life characteristics. However, midlife employment experiences remain associated with earlier retirement, net of more temporally proximate correlates, highlighting the need for further theorization and empirical evaluation of the mechanisms through which increasingly common employment experiences influence the age at which older Americans retire.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI 53706, USA. jraymo@ssc.wisc.edu
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Raymo
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.forename: Megan M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Sweeney
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Hauser
authors.forename: Jeong-Hwa
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Ho
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D004651:Employment / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007587:Job Description; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D007750:Labor Unions; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D010415:Pensions; D012179:Retirement / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014922:Wisconsin