Mechanism of Action of Policy-Related Factors on Chinese Employees’ Early Retirement Behavior

Abstract

Nowadays, aging is a global challenge to most of countries. Retirement age, as an important factor to aging problem, has become a hot issue in the academic world. Especially in China, how to adjust retirement age is a complicated but interesting problem. This study, based on the CHARLS (China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study) data of 2011, explored the influencing factors for Chinese employees’ early retirement behavior, and focused on the influencing mechanism on policy-related factors working age and pension. In Part One, binary logit regression method was used to research the influencing factors for the early retirement of Chinese staff and workers, as well as the influence relation between working age and pension, concluding that a longer working age led to a higher pension level but a lower probability of early retirement, and finding that employees’ re-employment after early retirement under pressure from life caused by the lower average pension level in China was a major reason for the negative correlation between pension and early retirement. In Part Two, an “Moderated Mediator” model was built based on an analysis of the preliminary study and an interview with the employees in different types of units, result showing that pension had some intermediary effects between working age and early retirement, and meanwhile the effects were under the positive adjustment of work in public institution. Finally, some policy suggestions were put forward in this study for the adjustment of retirement policy.

Keywords: early retirement, working age, pension, public institution, moderated mediator.