Many Western countries face the dilemma of an aging workforce that, it is worried, will constrain labor markets at the same time as the demand for transfers and services consumed by the elderly
increases sharply. In addition, many countries are also experiencing declines in the participation of older workers of pre-retirement age in the workforce, thereby compounding the problem. In
this work, Hof瓣cker (a researcher with the U. of Bamberg, Germany) develops and tests a life-course approach to understanding early retirement transitions in Europe and North America. He
identifies economic globalization as the main contextual force that has contributed to the decline of older workers in the labor market, but also considers impacts of institutional arrangements
in different national contexts, including national education and training systems and specific welfare and labor market characteristics that influences the continued participation or retirement
of older workers in the labor market. This framework is then tested empirically against institutional and labor-force macro-data from selected European and North American countries and against
the results from a cross-national analysis of micro-data from the European community Household Panel. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
