Content and Objectives

The project was launched against the background of the raising of the legal retirement age in Germany. In order to acquire information about the desires of elderly people for prolonged involvement in working life, in 2008 a survey of 1,500 employees living in private households aged 55 to 65 years was conducted under the title Employment after Retirement. The survey included persons who are or were once gainfully employed.

The objective of this project is to find out the general attitudes towards further employment beyond the age of 65 and ascertain the conditions required for this. For this purpose, in addition to facts such as the occupational category, the size and the sector of the employer or the vocational position, we also surveyed attitudes towards the raising of the legal retirement age, the willingness to continue working, the assessment of the working atmosphere, identification with the firm, an evaluation of the working conditions as well as information about personal health conditions.

In addition, analyses of the survey data indicate a positive correlation between the future self-assessed “productivity” (which correlates positively with the desire to continue working) and the intra-company position. Is the future self-assessed productivity – as an important factor for the willingness to continue working in retirement age – rather a phenomenon on the management level or do certain barriers exist for the middle and lower company positions in regard to the willingness to stay longer in the working life? Can job- and organisation-related characteristics add to a siginicant approach to an explanation?