This study explores engagement in leisure activities in relation to retirement among individuals aged 58–75 using Swedish longitudinal data over the 1981–2010 period. Our focus is on the relationship between leisure engagement before retirement and retirement timing, as well as on the relationship between leisure engagement before and after retirement. Engagement in leisure is measured through participation in several leisure activities which are popular in Sweden. The results indicate that leisure engagement is not associated with retirement timing when period is considered in the models. It is noteworthy that when the effect of period is excluded, but central predictors of retirement timing are included, leisure engagement is shown to be statistically significant. The results also indicate that leisure engagement patterns in retirement tend to be a continuation of preretirement leisure engagement patterns. The policy implications of these results for active ageing and health are discussed.

Objective: This study addresses the importance of grandparenthood in relation to retirement timing in Sweden. It extends previous research by assessing a number of grandparental characteristics, such as being a grandparent, a grandparent’s age and gender, number of years since the transition to grandparenthood, number of grandchildren, number of grandchild sets, and age of the youngest grandchild, while simultaneously controlling for other central predictors of retirement timing.

Methods: The study uses survival analysis on Swedish population register data for cohorts born between 1935 and 1945 over the 1993‒2012 period.

Results: The results indicate that grandparents have a higher retirement risk than non-grandparents, even after controlling for age and other central predictors of retirement. The results also show that those who have been grandparents for more than two years have a higher risk of retirement; however, there is variation with respect to the age of the grandparent. In addition, grandparents with multiple grandchildren and grandchild sets exhibit an increased risk of retirement. The study does not find strong differences between grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ retirement timing.

Conclusions: The study finds that grandparents at different life stages have an elevated risk of retirement compared with non-grandparents, but there is also variation among grandparents, and the more complex the family situation, the higher the risk of retirement.

Contribution: The inclusion of grandparenthood enriches the understanding of the complexity of the retirement decision and indicates that this decision is more closely linked to intergenerational family structures than the literature has previously shown. 

Workforces are aging in most developed countries. At the same time, the parents of workers nearing retirement age are more likely to still be alive and in need of care. This study investigated the association between retirement timing and the mortality of parents in Sweden. Data were derived from Swedish population registers for men and women born in 1940-1945. Discrete-time survival analysis using complementary log-log functions was employed. The study finds evidence that parental mortality was positively linked to retirement timing and that the association was stronger and more consistent for women than for men, particularly for women with only a mother or father alive. Additionally, women had a higher risk of retirement in the immediate period after parental death, especially when the father was widowed. In contrast, men had a higher risk of retiring when either the mother or father had been widowed for some years. Moreover, siblings seem to moderate the effect of retirement, and the pattern was most noticeable among women. Overall, the risk of retirement was greater among individuals without siblings, with both parents alive, or with only a mother or father alive. The findings indicate that individuals with parents who were vulnerable due to widowhood were able to work longer when they were from larger families, a finding consistent with a caregiving explanation. That the relationship was more evident among women provides support for the conclusion that care provision for parents motivates labor force disengagement in the form of retirement.

The study examines how married couples’ age differences influence retirement coordination in Sweden. High-quality longitudinal administrative registers allow us to study all marital opposite-sex and same-sex couples in Sweden in relation to labor market outcomes. With means of regression analysis, we find that the likelihood of couples retiring close in time decreases as their age difference increases but that age differences have a similar effect on retirement coordination for couples with larger age differences. Additionally, retirement coordination is largely gender neutral in opposite-sex couples with age differences regardless of whether the male spouse is older. Also, male same-sex couples retire closer in time than both opposite-sex couples and female same-sex couples. The definition of retirement coordination as the number of years between retirements contributes to the literature on couples’ retirement behavior and allows us to study the degree of retirement coordination among all couples, including those with larger age differences.