An De Coen

The impact of age on the reservation wage: The role of employment efficacy and work intention: A study in the Belgian context

This study explores the relationship between age and reservation wage. The authors investigate whether individuals’ attitudes toward employment, that is, their “employment efficacy” and “work intention,” mediate this relationship. The authors examine this in the Belgian labor market, where substantial differences exist between blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, and civil servants regarding payment systems, employment protection, and pension benefits. Path analysis on a sample of 22,796 Belgian workers aged 18 to 60 years reveals a reverse U-shaped relationship between age and the reservation wage via employment efficacy and a U-shaped relationship via work intention. In addition, study analyses also show a direct relationship between age and the reservation wage. The effects vary with employment status. The authors discuss implications for theory, practice, and future research.

Studying retirement from a career perspective: are people who take charge of their career less inclined to retire?

Many active ageing policies are inspired by the idea that sustainable careers may extend individuals’ working lives through their impact on career satisfaction and employability. However, empirical evidence on these assumptions remains scarce. Few studies on the transition to retirement take a career perspective. In this chapter, we investigate how career competencies influence the intention to retire through their impact on self-directedness, career satisfaction and employability. We thereby focus on two career competencies: self-awareness and adaptability. We examine how self-awareness and adaptability impact self-directedness and how employability in the internal and external labor market as well as subjective career satisfaction mediate the relationship between self-directedness and the retirement intention of older workers. Path analysis using a sample of 285 workers aged 50 or older reveals that self-awareness increases self-directedness, which, in turn, relates positively to external employability and career satisfaction. External employability and career satisfaction decrease the retirement intention. We did not find a mediating relationship via internal employability. The same counts for adaptability. In addition, adaptability is also related directly to retirement intention. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

Job seekers’ search intensity and wage flexibility: does age matter?

ABSTRACT Although studies on job search implicitly presume that relationships between antecedents and indicators of job search are similar for job seekers from different ages, few studies have tested this assumption even though lifespan theories state that individual motives and behaviour significantly change as people age. From this theoretical perspective, we examine how age moderates the relationships between re-employment efficacy, employment commitment and financial hardship, on the one hand, and job search intensity and wage flexibility, on the other hand. Path analysis on a sample of 240 Belgian job seekers who were at the start of an outplacement programme showed that re-employment efficacy relates positively to job search intensity and wage flexibility for older job seekers, while we find negative relationships for younger job seekers. For employment commitment and financial hardship, we do not find any interaction effects with age. Employment commitment relates positively to search intensity, whereas financial hardship relates negatively to wage flexibility, irrespective of age. We discuss implications for theory, practice and future research.

Job Search Intensity and Wage Flexibility Among Different Age Groups

This study explores how wage flexibility and job search intensity evolve with search duration among young, middle-aged and older job seekers. It moreover investigates whether financial hardship and reemployment efficacy mediate the relationships. Multi-group structural equation modeling on a sample of 1205 Belgian unemployed job seekers showed that search duration affected both wage flexibility and job search intensity, and that effect sizes differed across age groups. Wage flexibility did not evolve with search duration among young and middle-aged job seekers. Yet, our analyses revealed a direct, negative relationship between search duration and wage flexibility among older job seekers. While financial hardship and reemployment efficacy fully mediate the positive relationship between search duration and search intensity for middle-aged seekers, they only partially mediate the relationship for older job seekers. We discuss implications for theory, practice and future research.

The Impact of Age on the Reservation Wage: The Role of Employability

In an aging society, it is important to gain insight in the factors explaining why the transition from unemployment to employment gets harder as people move from mid to late career. This study focuses on one related aspect: individuals’ wage setting behaviour. The study explores the relationship between age and the reservation wage for people in their mid and late career. We moreover investigate whether two employability factors, ‘willingness to move’ and ‘ease of movement’, mediate this relationship. Higher wage claims would not necessarily be problematic if they result from a stronger labour market position (ease of movement) and therefore a higher ‘market value.’ It would be more problematic if higher wage claims are a way to price oneself out of the labour market because of a low willingness to move. Path analysis on a sample of 8,113 Belgian workers aged 40 to 60 years reveals that age positively affects the reservation wage via willingness to move. Yet, this effect is neutralized by the negative influence via ease of movement. Our analyses moreover reveal a direct, positive effect of age on the reservation wage, if employability factors are controlled for. This finding suggests that wage claims are increasing if people move from mid to late career irrespective of their employability. We discuss implications for theory, practice and future research.