Differences in retirement preferences between the solo self-employed and employees: do job characteristic play an explanatory role? [Verschillen in pensioneringspreferenties tussen zzp’ers en werknemers: Spelen werkkenmerken een verklarende rol?]

Differences in retirement preferences between the self-employed and employees: Do job characteristics play an explanatory role? Prior research has shown that self-employed workers are on average more likely than employees to expect to retire relatively late and to actually do so, and to report uncertainty about their envisioned retirement timing. Aside from frequently men-tioned explanations that focus on financial resources and institutional structures, these differences in retirement processes may relate to the job characteristics of the self-employed and employees. The central question of this study is: To what extent and how can differences in self-reported retirement timing preferences between self-employed workers and employees in the Netherlands be explained by differences in their job characteristics (i.e., flexibility, autonomy, skills-job match, and job security)? This study involved analysis of 8,192 employees and 626 self-employed respondents without personnel (age 45-64) who participated in 2016 in the Study on Transitions in Employment, Ability and Motivation (STREAM). Retirement timing preferences are measured by means of a question that asked respondents until what age they would like to continue working. The self-employed workers studied prefer on average to retire 2.2 years later than employees. The outcome variable of this study distinguished between early (< age 65), on-time (≥ 65 and ≤ 67), late (> 67), and uncertain (“don’t know”) retirement preferences. Multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that the self-employed are more likely than employees to prefer late retirement (vs. on-time) and to report uncertainty about their preferred retirement age. Mediation analysis based on the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method shows that the job characteristics studied mediate 16% of the relationship between self-employ-ment and late retirement preferences. When interpreting the study findings, it should be noted that the current study focuses on differences in retirement timing prefer-ences between the self-employed and employees. For future research it would be relevant as well to study how retirement timing preferences differ within the highly diverse group of the self-employed.