Employment Experiences in Later Life in England and the US: A Gendered Life Course Perspective

Policy responses to recent concerns over population ageing and the sustainability of public pensions tend to gloss over the considerable heterogeneity in older adults’ labour market trajectories and the social and biographical factors that shape them.  Indeed, decisions about work in later life are linked to gender, social position, employment and family histories, as well as being shaped by the national context in which they occur.  While England and the US are both classified as ‘liberal’ welfare states, important differences exist with respect to family, employment and pension policies that have implications for understanding patterns of later-life labour market involvement and its relationship to health. In this paper we adopt a gendered life course perspective to understand the association between later-life employment biographies (ages 50-69), gender and health among older adults in England and the US using data from the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing and the US Health and Retirement Survey.  Our approach uses sequence analysis to model labour market biographies, and regression techniques to assess their gender-specific relationships to family and work experiences earlier in the life course and to health and well-being in later life. While later life employment is gendered in both countries, stronger gender gradients are evident in England relative to the US. Between-country differences in the gendered nature of labour market involvement and its association with health are discussed in light of country specific policies across the life course.