Morten Blekesaune

Working Conditions and Early Retirement: A Prospective Study of Retirement Behavior

This article investigates the impact of working conditions on individual retirement for 270 occupations. It combines survey data for estimates of job strains, census data for occupations, and income and social insurance/security data, for the transition from work to retirement for 19,114 Norwegian employees between the ages of 60 and 67. Retirement was identified by a drop in work-related income and studied both jointly and separately for disability and nondisability retirement, including four types of disability. Data were analyzed using logistic regression (competing risk) “duration” models. Findings indicate that disability retirement is related to physical job strains. Among men, both pathways of early retirement are related to low autonomy in job tasks. Furthermore, psychological job stress may reduce nondisability retirement. The findings are discussed in relation to (1) the prospect of reducing early retirement by changing working conditions and (2) who will gain from certain changes in pension systems.

Sexual Satisfaction in Young Adulthood Cohabitation, Committed Dating or Unattached Life?

It has been suggested in several studies that marriage provides the best framework for a sexual relationship. During the past few decades, however, the majority of young singles have maintained a partnered sex life, and marriage has given way to cohabitation as the typical way for heterosexual couples to live together in young adulthood. Taking a longitudinal population-based sample of young Norwegian adults (n = 2695, age 20-26), we investigated the degree to which sexual satisfaction was associated with the type of relationship in which they were engaged. Among both males and females, the sexually active unattached were the least satisfied with their sex lives, and a committed and long-lasting relationship seemed to be of greater importance for women than for men. In these relationships, however, a decrease in sexual activity and sexual satisfaction was observed over time, suggesting that boredom and routine may rapidly decrease sexual satisfaction. Most striking was the finding that females seem to profit in their sexual relationships from traditionally feminine and masculine gender roles in the form of androgyny. Men, on the other hand, still seem to manoeuvre on the basis of less flexible gender roles.

Youth, unemployment and political marginalisation

The article investigates the impact of being unemployed on political marginalisation among young people. Are unemployed youth politically marginalised compared with employed youth? Is the impact of unemployment on political marginalisation related to the development of the welfare state? Based on Marshall’s concept of social citizenry, and Esping-Andersen’s theory of decommodification politics, the impact of unemployment on political marginalisation was expected to be least in the most-developed welfare states. In these countries, welfare policies were expected to counteract marginalisation among the unemployed. The analyses were based on the Eurobarometer survey Young Europeans from 1990. Three aspects of political marginalisation were investigated: political confidence, political interest and political extremism. Unemployed youth express less confidence in politics, they talk less about politics and they more frequently support revolutionary political ideas, compared with employed youth. The greatest difference in political confidence between unemployed and employed is found in Great Britain, while Italy represents a deviant case where the unemployed have more confidence than the employed. The development of the welfare state does not appear to be a crucial factor for political confidence among the unemployed.

Personality Traits Increasingly Important for Male Fertility: Evidence from Norway

We study the relationship between personality traits and fertility using a survey of Norwegian men and women born from 1927 to 1968 (N = 7017 individuals). We found that personality relates to mens and womens fertility differently; conscientiousness decreases female fertility, openness decreases male fertility and extraversion raises the fertility of both sexes. Neuroticism depresses fertility for men, but only for those born after 1956. The lower male fertility in younger cohorts high in neuroticism cannot be explained by partnership status, income or education. The proportion of childless men (at age 40 years) has increased rapidly for Norwegian male cohorts from 1940 to 1970 (from about 15 to 25 per cent). For women, it has only increased marginally (from 10 to 13 per cent). Our findings suggest that this could be partly explained by the increasing importance of personality characteristics for mens probability of becoming fathers. Men that have certain personality traits may increasingly be avoiding the long–term commitment of having children, or their female partners are shunning entering this type of commitment with them. Childbearing in contemporary richer countries may be less likely to be influenced by economic necessities and more by individual partner characteristics, such as personality. Copyright

Ageing, income and living standards : evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

ABSTRACT In Britain, older people have lower average incomes and a higher risk of income poverty than the general population. Older pensioners are more likely to be in poverty than younger ones. Yet certain indicators of their living standards suggest that older people experience less hardship than expected, given their incomes. A possible explanation is that older people convert income into basic living standards at a higher rate than younger people, implying that as people age they need less income to achieve a given standard of living. Much existing evidence has been based on cross-sectional data and therefore may not be a good guide to the consequences of ageing. We use longitudinal data on people aged at least 50 years from the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the effects of ageing on the relationship between standard of living, as measured by various deprivation indices, and income. We find that for most indices, ageing increases deprivation when controlling for income and other factors. The exception is a subjective index of ‘financial strain’, which appears to fall as people age. We also find evidence of cohort effects. At any given age and income, more-recently-born older people in general experience more deprivation than those born longer ago. To some extent these ageing and cohort effects balance out, which suggests that pensions do not need to change with age.

Can personality predict retirement behaviour? A longitudinal analysis combining survey and register data from Norway

This study investigates how far personality can predict the timing and routes of people’s retirement. It uses a large comprehensive Norwegian survey, with larger sample size than earlier related studies, providing estimates of personality based on the five-factor model. The survey data are matched with administrative data, allowing observations of retirement over the 2002–2007 period. The analysis distinguishes between the disability and the non-disability retirements. Retirement is investigated using discrete time, competing risk, logistic regression models amongst individuals aged 50–69. Results indicate that personality predicts disability retirement but not non-disability retirement. Neuroticism increases the risk of disability retirement in women. Agreeableness and extraversion may prevent disability retirement, whereas openness may increase the risk of disability in men. Personality effects are generally consistent across models controlling, or not controlling, for well-known predictors of retirement behaviour including education, income and occupational group. The main exception is that poor health explains the effect of neuroticism on women’s disability retirement.

Unemployment transitions and self-rated health in Europe: A longitudinal analysis of EU-SILC from 2008 to 2011

The Great Recession of 2008 has led to elevated unemployment in Europe and thereby revitalised the question of causal health effects of unemployment. This article applies fixed effects regression models to longitudinal panel data drawn from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for 28 European countries from 2008 to 2011, in order to investigate changes in self-rated health around the event of becoming unemployed. The results show that the correlation between unemployment and health is partly due to a decrease in self-rated health as people enter unemployment. Such health changes vary by country of domicile, and by individual age; older workers have a steeper decline than younger workers. Health changes after the unemployment spell reveal no indication of adverse health effects of unemployment duration. Overall, this study indicates some adverse health effects of unemployment in Europe--predominantly among older workers.

Violent Behaviors, Violent Victimization, and Doping Agents A Normal Population Study of Adolescents

The authors investigated the association between doping agents (mostly anabolic-androgenic steroids) and involvement in violence and experience of violent victimization in Oslo, Norway. The sample consisted of 10,828 adolescents aged 14 to 17 years. Of the adolescents, 11.5% had been offered doping agents and 1.8% had used doping agents. When confounding variables were controlled for, there was an association between exposure to doping agents and own violence for both genders, but use of doping agents had no additional effect. The same pattern was found with regard to victimization. However, when only the most serious victimization episodes were considered, increased risk for users of doping among boys but not girls was found. Doping agents may serve as a marker of a violent subculture more than being a causal factor in the etiology of violence. However, use of doping agents may also result in a big appearance in male users, which may make them a target for youth violence.

Marital transitions and life satisfaction Evidence from longitudinal data from Norway

This article is based on three waves of data collected by the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT), Norway. It investigates changes in life satisfaction associated with transition both into and out of marital unions (marriages and cohabitations). It provides longitudinal data on life satisfaction for a larger sample (N=57,446), a longer age span (19–101 years) and over a longer observation period (22 years) than previously published research on this topic. The large sample permits interaction analyses focusing on small gender/age categories. Results indicate that marriage and cohabitation does enhance life satisfaction, but more for some groups than for others. Cohabitation enhances life satisfaction no less than marriage. There is little difference in life satisfaction between the non-partnered statuses when adjusted for selection. Both men and women are more satisfied as married or cohabiting than as non-partnered. However, transition into widowhood is more harmful to men than to women, and divorce is much more harmful to young males (below 35) than to any other age or gender group.

Job insecurity and sickness absence: correlations between attrition and absence in 36 occupational groups.

Aims: To investigate how job insecurity, as indicated by attrition rates out of employment, affects sickness absence among remaining workers. Methods: A longitudinal analysis investigated how the percentage of workers absent due to sickness was affected by attrition out of employment in Norwegian Labour Force Surveys from 1997 to 2005, between 31 quarterly observations at the level of 36 occupational groups. Results: Rising attrition is associated with more sickness absence. Conclusions: Previous research has argued that job insecurity can lead to more absence because of a stressor effect as well as to less absence because of a disciplinary effect. This research indicates that the stressor effect is stronger than the disciplinary effect.