Factors affecting the work status of older Australians. An interdisciplinary approach.

With the declining work force participation in developed countries of older men over the last decade, the study of factors affecting their status became of major interest in economic analyses. It is argued here that social constraints, as well as economic incentives and individual preferences, are important factors in retirement behaviour. Both trivariate and bivariate logit analyses of Australian data confirm the significance of variables indicating social constraint on work related to age and gender. An entirely different model emerged for predicting part-time work status compared to the model for full-time work status. It is argued that the task of analysing survey data requires an interdisciplinary approach to deal with applied problems.