I would like to welcome everybody to our lecture.
In the context of the lecture series of the Center of Globalization and Governance, or
the title of the series is Social Change and Politics in the Globalized World.
And we are very happy that today we can welcome a professor, Pierre H. Jenssen.
He is from the University of Albor in Denmark.
Pierre is a sociologist, but he is working there at the political science department.
And he is the director of a big and international well-known research center, the Center for
Comparative Welfare State Studies.
And Pierre is a social scientist with a very high international reputation and internationally
very well-known and famous.
He has, on one hand, he has had many important grants.
He was leading several international research programs and also several international big
research projects.
And I would like to mention some of these.
They include that he was a chair of a big international research program, which was
cost action number A13.
And the title was Change of Welfare States, Labor Markets and Citizenship.
So we have collaborated also in that he was the chair of the whole thing with universities
and teams from universities and all over Europe involved.
And then he was also where we also collaborated in the governing committee of an international
network of excellence, a European network of excellence, a reconciling work and welfare
in the European welfare states.
And then he also was a partner in a big international research project on activation senior potentials
on the older citizens, how to activate their potentials as part.
And he is also leader of a Danish research project, which is funded by the Danish National
Research Foundation, local variations in Ehrlich here.
And then finally also he is the chair of a big and very important and very interesting
research project in which I and my team are also involved.
But he is leader of the whole research project in the seventh EU framework program, which
is called FLOSE, which means the impact of local welfare systems on female labor force
participation and social cohesion.
So there is one main focus is local welfare systems in 11 cities in Europe, which we are
comparing there.
And then he is also, and the main topic is also how they impact on women's labor force
participation in a comparative perspective and the explanation why there are differences.
Pear has also published extensively on issues like social citizenship, the comparative analysis
of welfare states and dynamics of welfare state development, early exit and retirement.
We will hear something about that topic here.
In formal and informal work, Ehrlich here, labor markets, gender and inclusion.
And I would like to mention finally also some of his recent publications.
I would like to mention two books.
One is Changing Labor Markets, Welfare Policies and Citizenship.
It was published with a policy press.
And the other one is Informal and Formal Work in Europe, published with Rod Litch.
And then he has published many articles in international journals, like, for example,
the Journal of Social Policy, the Journal of European Social Policy, all these are very
journals with a very high reputation.
And European Societies, the Journal of Aging, the International Journal of Sociology and
Social Policy, and then also some important Nordic social scientific journals.
So before I talk longer than Pear had the time to talk, I will stop here with the introduction
and then I will give over to Pear and ask him to start.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much and thank you very much.
Thank you very much and thank you very much for the invitation to give a presentation
here.
I'm very honored.
It's always a pleasure to visit University of Hamburg and especially the Center for Globalization
of Governance, which is probably one of the leading centers in welfare status in Europe.
So it's really a pleasure to be here.
The title of my presentation is, as you can see, How to Welfare States Manage the Graying
of Society, Early Exit in the Scandinavian Countries.
And as the title indicates, I will look more into the Scandinavian countries and the Scandinavian
experience in relation to early exit, early retirement.
But I also think that my discussion has a broader relevance for most countries in Europe.
Because what most countries in Europe are, they are faced with the challenge of demographic
aging, some more than others.
But overall, the question has been posed, how can we tackle this challenge of demographic
aging, meaning, and how can we change people from exiting early from the labor market?
How can we change that into people exit late from the labor market?
So we are faced with the challenge that we have to solve the problem that we want older
people to retire later.
This idea that older people should retire later in Europe and in America for that case
as well, it has been inscribed in the so-called incentive discourse, where early exit, early
retirement has primarily been seen as a supply side problem.
It has thus been perceived that older workers, voluntary, leave the labor market, and they
are lured out of the labor market by generous welfare benefits and welfare or pension benefits.
That is so to say that the generous welfare systems, so to say, drag or pull older workers
out of the labor market.
Given this interpretation of the problem, most governments in Europe have redesigned
the welfare states, incentives to retire early have been modified by raising state
pension ages or by reducing benefits and straightening eligibility criteria to early retirement.
And these measures have all over Europe been quite extensive.
But even though the measures have been quite extensive in reforming the early retirement
and pension systems, outcomes have actually been quite modest, maybe except from Germany
where we have seen a sharp increase in the employment rates of older workers.
But in general, even though these pension reforms have been quite extensive, we have
not seen a really turn in this transition from early exit into late exit.
Early retirement has continued to play an important role in the lives of millions of
older workers all over Europe.
And most probably, early retirement will continue to be a future feature of labor markets in
the future.
Measures have thus more or less been unsuccessful.
And maybe the measures we have used so far have been wrong.
I'm very critical to the neoliberal-inspired incentive discourse which have guided reforms
and according to which early exit, early retirement is considered to be a voluntary and free
choice.
And I hope that this will also appear from my presentation that I don't believe in this
type of reasoning or thinking.
My presentation is subdivided into two major sections.
In the first part, I will go more deep into the Scandinavian experience and I will try
to explain differences in the early exit retirement pattern in the Scandinavian countries using
Denmark and Sweden as examples.
As you can see from this chart, there are huge differences in the employment rates of
older workers.
So we see very, very huge differences in the early retirement pattern.
In Sweden, the employment rate of older workers was in 2011, 72.3, whereas in Denmark it was
only around 60%.
But even though it is much slower in Denmark as compared to Sweden, Denmark is in a European
context actually a late exit country because in Europe, in EU 27, as you can see, on an
EU average it is only 47.4, whereas in Germany it is about 60%.
But what I will go into and what I will try to discuss in my first part is why do we have
these differences between Denmark and Sweden?
After that, I will move into the second part.
And in my second part, I will look into the causes and effects of early retirement from
a citizenship perspective.
That means that I will go into a more theoretical and empirical discussion about the causes
and effects of early exit early retirement.
And overall, I will make a distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement.
And the distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement also makes topical
whether voluntary and involuntary retirement experience the retirees actually experience
their retirement differently.
That means, you know, when you retire, is the retirement experience differently among
those who retire voluntary and involuntary?
And I will look at these different, whether there are these differences, and I will look
into these differences from a citizenship perspective.
My question then will be, is early exit early retirement associated with loss of citizenship
and for whom?
And when I discuss this, my primary focus is on Denmark.
But I will also draw parallels to Sweden and other European countries.
So my first part is, how can differences in exit pattern between Denmark and Sweden be
explained?
And according to the Danish government, it's very, very easy to explain it.
And before I show you or inform you about how the Danish government explains these differences,
I should perhaps start by introducing very shortly to you the pathway out of the labor
market in Denmark.
In Denmark, the labor force is about 2.9 million.
And people can leave early from the labor market.
Normally the pensionable age is 65.
But you can leave the labor market if you have a work accident or health-determined
disability pension, and about 245,000 are on disability pension, whereas early retirement
is voluntary, and you can freely choose to retire early between the age of 60 to 64,
and then the pensionable age is...
What I will do in my speak is I will primarily go into the early retirement pension.
So when I...
I will not go very deep into the disability pension.
And so why are these...
Why do we have these differences in employment rates among older workers in Denmark and Sweden?
As I said to you, the Danish government thinks that this is very easy to answer this question
because prior to the reform in 2000, an early retirement reform in 2011, the then Danish
government stated that the reason why the employment rate of early employment rate among
60 to 64 years old in Denmark is substantially lower than in Sweden must be seen in the light
that Sweden and Norway do not have an early retirement pension like the Danish.
So if incentives to retire are modified, or if incentives to retire are eliminated by
elimination of this...
If we eliminate this early retirement pension, then all those who are in early retirement
today, if we eliminate it, they will be on the labor market tomorrow.
It's very easy.
So...
But so...
And estimates done by economists, they say that about 80 to 90% of all those who are
on early retirement benefits, if we abolish the scheme, they will be in employment tomorrow.
And thereby, if we just abolish the scheme, then we will reach about the same employment
rate as they have in Sweden.
Well, let's see how much of this is true.
What I'm going to do now is to make a very sketchy comparison of factors conditioning
early exit retirement.
But I also hope that this sketchy comparison will illustrate the huge differences among
the Scandinavian countries with regard to labor market as well as the welfare states.
Generally, the Scandinavian countries are classified as a social democratic welfare
state.
But as I hope you will see from this presentation, there are also huge internal differences within
the Scandinavian countries.
First I will look at the incentive structure in Denmark and Sweden.
The Danish retirement system is organized so that we have the disability pension, which
I mentioned before.
Then we have an early retirement benefit scheme, which allow people between, well, it's not
64 to 65, it's 60 to 64 years of age to retire voluntarily.
And then we have a universal old people pension, which you are eligible to when you are 65.
And the replacement rate of this is rather high.
So because of this replacement rate of old people's pension, there's no really economic
incentives to postpone retirement.
If you retire at the age of 60, you are not punished at the age of 65 because you will
just get this flat rate old people's pension.
And a very, very large proportion of the population is dependent on this pension.
We do in Denmark have occupational pensions, and today it's a reasonable, it's mainly
higher educated people who have this occupational pension system, but it was introduced for
the whole labor market as of 1991 and it will be fully matured in 2025 and then it will
become the predominant form of pension also in Denmark.
In Sweden, we have also a disability pension system, but eligibility criteria to the disability
benefit system in Sweden is a bit stricter than in Denmark.
Then in Sweden, you have something called gansi pension, which is very equivalent to
old people's pension in Denmark.
It's a flat rate benefit, but benefits are not as generous as they are in Denmark.
And it's only a rather small proportion of Swedish population, older people who are dependent
on this system.
Most people are dependent on a contribution-based occupational pension system, which was introduced
in the 1950s.
But in Sweden, you can also retire.
In the private sector, you can retire at the age of 55, whereas in the public sector, you
can freely choose to retire at the age of 61.
But of course, if you retire at the age of 61 or 55, then the pension you will get will
be much smaller if you postpone retirement until the age of 65.
So you are punished if you retire earlier in Sweden.
So if you really want a high pension, there is an incentive to stay on the labor market
until the age of 65.
But if you don't care much about whether it's high or a bit low, then the availability
of early retirement is actually there.
That means that if we compare the Swedish and Danish system, voluntary early exit options
exist in both countries.
Incentives are somewhat higher in Sweden if the wish is to get a high pension.
But the question is, can these differences really, in the incentive structure, as propagated
by economists, can they really explain the differences in the exit pattern?
I doubt it.
And I will now go through other factors which are highly relevant for early exit early retirement.
First, health.
People who are in bad health, they of course need to retire earlier than if you are in
good health.
And one of the best indicator of health condition in the population, that is, of course, life
expectancy.
And if you look at life expectancy in Denmark and Sweden, then in 2009 for males, for instance,
life expectancies were 76.5, whereas in Sweden it was 79.3.
That means that a Swede can expect actually to live three years longer than a Dane.
So in general, you must say that, well, the population as a whole, they are not as healthy
in Denmark as they are in Sweden.
And if you look at life expectancy at the age of 60, then you will see that males at
the age of 60 in Denmark, they live 20, they will probably live 20.6 years, whereas in
Sweden they will live longer.
So Swedes are without doubt more healthy than Danes are.
And this also points, but Swedes, they remain in the labor market.
And because they remain in the labor market, the average age of exit from the labor market
is also higher in Sweden as compared to Denmark.
In Sweden, on average, you leave the labor market at the age of 64.7, that's why they
have this high employment rate for older people, whereas in Denmark, there for males, you leave
the labor market at the age of 63.2.
But the point then becomes, because you are living much longer in Sweden as compared to
Denmark, then even though that the Swedes, they stay longer in the labor market, they
actually have a longer pension age as compared to Danes.
So of course, health has to do, health, so that is the first part.
It's not only the incentives, which condition early retirement is also the health, and well,
actually this about health in Denmark, it's quite, well, you know, embarrassing, because
mortality in Denmark is on the level as in Romania and other East European countries.
And we cannot compare, well, you know, life expectancy in Denmark to any other West European
countries.
We lag far behind when it comes to life expectancy.
And that could actually be a reason why you retire earlier.
Why do you have this longer life expectancy in Sweden as compared to Denmark?
One is lifestyle differences, things have a very unhealthy lifestyle, they smoke and
drink much more than the Swedes.
As you can see, they almost, no, not really, but they're close to, they drink double as
much alcohol as the Swedes.
Yes.
But, well, you know, within the Scandinavian countries, well, the Swedes and the Norway,
somehow they envy the Danes because they actually think that we have more fun.
So we drink and smoke a lot.
And the reason why they don't do it in Sweden is, of course, that they have a highly developed
health policy, which is, go beyond, which is also, well, you know, anchored in a strong
movement against alcohol, which emerged in the 19th century.
So it has to do with lifestyle differences, but it also has to do with environment regulations.
If you look at the years 2003 to 2009, the annual frequency of facial work accidents
per 100,000 workers was 2.0 in Denmark and only 1.5 in Sweden.
So you know, you are much more, the work environment in Sweden is much more protective towards
workers as it is in Denmark.
And another peculiar reality was that only a couple of years ago, there was a bridge
built between Denmark and Sweden over the Ersohn.
And it was meant so that Danes and Swedish workers should work together, but it very
soon showed this is impossible because what is allowed for the Danes, it was not allowed
for the Swedes.
So they had to make a very, very strict division of labor people who are doing work.
And also, I have a PhD student and she has just been three months in Stockholm and where
she got an office.
And the first day she was at the office, a physiologist came into her office and instructed
her how to sit on the chair and everything was organized, whereas in the University of
Albor where I am, I have never seen a physiologist in the workplace.
So they take much more care.
And that is, of course, also, that's also relevant.
Educational level among the 55 to 64 years of age.
What is interesting here is that, you know, the higher educated you are, the later you
exit.
And those who are the most educated university professors and things like that, they will
not leave the labor market.
They cling to their office and it's impossible to get rid of them.
So the higher educated you are, the more, the longer you will stay on the labor market.
And here we see that, you know, that people who are uneducated in Denmark, the proportion
of people uneducated in Denmark is much higher as compared to Sweden.
37% of Danes have no, between 55 to 64 years of age, have no formal education, but it's
only 25% in Sweden.
There's also something about the inclusiveness of labor markets.
In Sweden, more people are on sickness benefits than in Denmark.
And it could, of course, be one obvious reason could be that's because they have a more strict
eligibility criteria to the disability pension scheme.
But it could also be that the Swedish labor market is much more inclusive than the Danish
labor market.
Actually, it is.
It is very, very, very exclusive.
And in Sweden, much is really done and have been done for many, many, many years to make
space for vulnerable groups in the labor markets.
There are some new measures emerging in Denmark, but you can't compare it to.
So lack of inclusiveness in labor markets in Denmark is also an outcome of the Danish
fixed-security model.
I don't know whether you know much about the fixed-security model, but that has to
do, you know, in Denmark, employers, they can fire an employee with almost just one
hour notice.
They have full command over employment relationships.
And that's a further dimension which differs Sweden from Denmark very much.
In Denmark, there's hardly any protection for blue-collar workers, not at all, whereas
in Sweden, since 1974, legislation supports a last-in, first-out principle.
This means that, you know, the last hired is the first to get fired if there is a surplus
of workers.
And this protection against dismissals covers everybody on the labor market until they are
67.
Employers can fire older workers as they wish.
But until then, and it actually has some practical consequences.
I have made a survey among Danish and Swedish employers.
And as you can see from this, 23 employers' perception of employment protection.
We have asked employers to think that it's very easy, easy, difficult, or very difficult
to get rid of workers.
And as you can see from here, about 25, no, it's more 26, 27 percent, 27 percent of Danish
employers say it's very easy or it's easy.
Because only 2.9 percent of Swedish employers say it's very easy or easy.
So there are huge differences, not only in legislation, but also in practice as to this
employment protection.
And this, of course, has some effects, as I shall return to.
It has effect on how you treat your employees, because in Sweden, you are stuck with these
older workers.
You can't get rid of them, and therefore you have to make them more or less secure
that they are productive.
And how do you make them productive?
You offer them lifelong learning.
So in Sweden, people are offered much more vocational training as compared to Denmark.
Because if your skills are outdated to Denmark, you just get rid of people.
And in Sweden, you can't just get rid of people, so you have to keep them productive.
You have to all the time to secure that they are educated, re-educated through vocational
training programs.
Prevalence of senior policies.
There are also different structural features in the economy, where in Sweden, there are
much more senior policies as compared to Denmark, but you should also mention then
that in Sweden, they have many very, very large companies.
So they have the opportunity to establish human resource management departments, whereas
in Denmark, there are very, very small, many very small companies.
But it also indicates that employment relations are more stable in Sweden as compared to Denmark.
In Vienna, Sweden has, as I mentioned before, a very much higher frequency on the job training
as compared to Denmark.
So people are more skilled.
Basically, their basic education is higher in Sweden, and they are trained throughout
their working life through this lifelong learning.
What is also important here is that it is very, you know, if you really want, because
in Denmark, employers, they complain all the time, oh, we have this early retirement
scheme, and people, they are just moving on into this early retirement scheme, and therefore,
we don't like it, and we want to have this early retirement scheme abolished.
But then you can also ask, what do employers actually do in order to retain the work?
And we have asked employers in Denmark, have you, over the last two years, asked an older
worker to postpone retirement by one to two years?
And 71.4% said we have never done that, and we could probably never dream about doing
it.
26% have done it occasionally, and 2.6% have done it often.
So employers, they actually do very little to retain older workers, and I'm quite sure
that if they really wanted to retain, and they went down on their knees and said, okay,
mister, here, listen to me.
If you leave now, everything will fall apart.
Well, you know, you are indispensable for this company.
And please, please, please stay a couple of years more, and if the employee says, no,
I will not.
Well, then we will offer you some part-time jobs, and we will construct a special job
for you, and so I'm quite sure that if they did anything, they could be, employees could
be convinced to stay there, to remain in the labor market.
And that also, it's also shown in this table here where I have done a survey among employees.
It is, you know, where we have asked two groups of employees, of older workers, we
have asked people in employment in the age of 60 to 64, and we have asked you, does your
company try to retain older employees?
And almost 70% of those older workers in employment say, yes, in our firm, we try to retain older
workers.
Whereas, early retirees who have retired, in the age 60 to 64, we ask them, did your
company do anything to retain older workers, and only 21% say, yes.
So here we also see huge differences.
Those who are in the early retirement scheme, nobody has done anything to retain them in
the labor market, whereas those who are actually in the labor market, employers have done something
to retain them.
And that's also a huge difference between Denmark and Sweden.
In Denmark, we have had several reforms.
We had a reform in 2006, and we had a new reform in 2011, but they will not take effect
until sometime in the future.
But nevertheless, we see that less and less people take up early retirement.
So it's more or less maybe a natural development, that there is a tendency that fewer and fewer
take up early retirement, and that is an effect of people get more and more healthy.
It's an effect of people get better and better educated.
So, conclusion on part one, how important are these economic incentives activities?
And I would say that many factors, such as education, health, inclusiveness of labor
markets, discourses, and so on, also really matter for retraining older workers on the labor market.
But all these things are more difficult for politicians to manipulate.
Well, if you draw on these incentives or change the intensive structure of the pension system,
you look like a really strong politician.
And in Denmark, for quite some time, there was a discourse before the 2011 reform, where
the journalists, they ask all politicians, why don't you dare to touch this early retirement
thing?
And then finally, well, you know, the discourse.
But I don't believe that the incentives play this major role as propagated by international
organizations like OECD, and even in the EU, we find this discourse, and economists, they teach it.
Okay, then we move on to part two.
And here, I want to, more theoretically, to discuss supply, the supply and demand mechanisms
in relation to older workers' participation on the labor market.
And I will answer two questions.
Why do people leave?
And what are the effects of leaving early from the labor market in the citizenship perspective?
Two mechanisms will be discussed.
First I will discuss them separately, and then I will integrate them.
That means I will first ask myself, why do some people leave early?
And then I will, after I have answered that question, I will move on to the question,
what are the effects of leaving early in a citizenship perspective?
First I take the citizenship.
Ever since Marshall, full citizenship has been a central democratic ideal of the welfare
states, and full citizenship has been somehow connected to the notion of the good life.
Every citizenship is associated with a feeling of belonging, and that individual have a feeling
of equal social worth, irrespective of status differences.
So that we can meet when we are meeting in the labor market, when we meet in the political
communities or wherever we meet, we meet on equal footing.
That's what's really a basic principle in citizenship, that we meet, we have equal social
worth.
Citizenship requires economic, social and political rights and obligations.
For instance, economic rights, it may refer to that you must be lifted up about the poverty
line if you are supposed to have equal social worth.
If you are really down economically, marginalized, living at the margin of society, then you
come with your hat in your hand and you cannot meet your fellow citizenship on equal footing.
That means have equal social worth.
It manifests, citizenship must manifest itself through participation.
For instance, democratic participation and democratic participation, because what are
political rights worth, for instance, if nobody make use of them?
It's only when we make use of our democratic rights that our democratic institutions function
and are reproduced.
So it's very important that all citizens participate.
We must also have access to the labor market if you are willing and in a position to do
so.
And the citizenship also has an identity dimension and that is this about feeling, you must have
a feeling of that you have equal social worth with other citizens in society.
What's of citizenship then is related to the concept of marginalization and you become
marginalized and you tend to lose your citizenship if you have insufficient economic resources
to secure the autonomy of the individual.
You tend to become marginalized and lose your citizenship if participation of certain persons,
for instance, older people is excluded, limited or subject to conditions in the political,
economic and social arena of society.
And at the individual level, you are marginalized and you tend to lose your citizenship if,
for instance, you have low levels of self-esteem.
But the question then becomes, people who voluntarily have left the labor market, are
they marginalized?
And it depends, I will show, it depends on what are the reasons why you live the labor
market.
And I will now go into a discussion about this, which factors affect the decision to
retire, the retire, and I will say that the decision making is anchored in what you can
call push, pull and jump factors.
Push factors, before I go further, then I will also mention that these pull, push, pull
and jump factors, they are, they connect to different social science traditions, actually.
And in the previously early exit, early retirement was primarily considered to be a push phenomenon,
it is increasingly considered to be a pull phenomenon, and I will show you why.
Push, draw when you say push, that means that you are kicked more or less out of the labor
market, we don't want you here, leave us, and it can be because of you have a bad health,
that you know that you are fired, or when you are unemployed, nobody will hire an older,
an older worker.
So you are, we don't want you.
And that is that in push, the conception is that you are victimized by the social structures.
The structures matter here, and the early retirement is considered to be involuntary,
and it's also considered to be unwanted by the individual.
The individual doesn't really want to leave the labor market, they orient themselves towards
the labor market, but they are kicked out, we don't want you.
And to go back to this discussion about Denmark-Sweden, then I will say that push among other things
determined by health, we had these differences in health between Denmark and Sweden.
We had differences in the educational level of older employees.
We had differences in labor markets, exclusiveness.
We had differences in employment protection, and we had differences in personal policies
of companies.
So many of these aspects I mentioned in my presentation in comparison between Denmark
and Sweden, they were actually push factors, which is neglected as long, if you consider
early retirement to be a totally voluntary phenomenon.
Push is one explanation.
Another explanation is pull.
That means that you are, as an older worker, pulled out of the labor market, and there
are two types of pull.
The first type is anchored in rational actor theories, where retiring is seen as an outcome
of a deliberate and calculated reasoning and action.
And that means you are sitting at home, and then you find out, well, the gains of working
are not that big, so I wouldn't want to work any longer, so I prefer to retire.
And that means that older workers are lured out of the labor market by generous welfare
benefits.
They are, so to say, pulled out.
And that is this rational actor theories, whereas we also find some connections to sociology
within this pull, and that is where some sociologic, well, it's not sociologic, sociologic as such,
it's part of some sociological theories, where you consider the action of older workers
as a more or less mechanical reaction to norms and conventions.
And in this, for instance, if the pensionable age is 65, then at 65 you can consider yourself
to be out, well, finished, and your employer and everybody can consider you also, and your
colleagues and employer can consider, you are also, now you chose to be here, so goodbye.
But what is important to say here is that retirement in this sociological tradition
is seen as a mechanical reaction to the signals of the welfare system, where are you about
below or about 65 minutes of age.
Finally, we have jump.
Jump is also a voluntary phenomenon.
What early retirement scheme is here considered only to be one out of many factors conditioning
action.
So, jump is more or less connected to more reflexive sociology, perhaps.
I'm not sure, but where these pension schemes are only one factor out of many other conditioning
actions.
And jump supports individual self-fulfillment and self-actualization in a meaningful and
active third age.
And there are two types of jump.
Some jump because they want some social gains.
For instance, they want to be more with their husband, wife.
They want to be with their grandchildren.
So they want to be part of the communities in new ways.
So social gains, they want to achieve social gains, whereas other jump because they want
to achieve experience gains.
And that means, for instance, now I have been on the labor market doing this.
I have always wanted to become a writer or I have always wanted to become a painter.
Now I live this life and then I start to paint or I sell my house or buy a phone and then
I travel around the world or whatever.
So that is you are achieving some experience gains.
This can be summarized in this table where what are the exit factors?
We have exit factors.
We have push, pull and jump.
The first is involuntary.
Pull is voluntary.
It's based on rationality and a reflex.
It's a reflex of the pension system, whereas jump is also voluntary, but it's based on
reflexive beauty.
And now I will just take push.
What you do when you leave the labor market involuntary is that you leave a role.
It's about role exit.
And the outcomes may be social suffering and risk of economic, social and political magnetization.
You lose your citizenship and you end up with low levels of self-esteem.
You are actually oriented yourself towards the labor market, but you know you are unwanted,
nobody wants you there, and I will show you later that you actually run the risk of ending
up in economic, social and political magnetization.
Pull is voluntary.
When you get the money from the welfare state, your role as a wage trainer is compensated
and when you move into a new role, you are compensated for a role change, and the outcomes
very much depends on the quality of social citizenship.
But the point is that citizenship generates role following.
You follow the rules when you are 65, you leave, so it's the social rights and obligations.
You follow the social rights and obligations.
It's based on reflexivity.
What you do when you leave the labor market is you enter into a totally new role that you desire.
You have a desire to enter a new role and it leads to new form of integration.
And citizenship, you are looking for new rules.
You are not a rule follower, you are a rule finder, and citizenship may not be that important
for what you are actually doing.
Empirical.
Some retirees suffer from loss of citizenship, economic, social and political, but it depends
on the pathway out of the labor market.
Well, those who are on disability pension in Denmark and in other Scandinavian countries,
they are stigmatized much more as compared to those who use the early retirement scheme,
because it's a voluntary scheme.
But even though if you use the early retirement scheme, the effects of retiring depends on
whether early exit retirement is perceived as voluntary or involuntary.
As to the early retirees, it is of course complicated to identify this push-puller jump
into a form.
Just to illustrate this, for instance, a nurse is very stressed because he has a bad work environment.
There's no connection between the demand that the management puts to her and her resources,
and she does not experience any reconnection from management.
So here there are, this is some sort of push.
Her husband has just retired and she has recently got grandchildren.
She would like to spend more time together with her husband and grandchildren than his jump.
There's no benefits from working if the two, well, you know, there are no economic gains really.
Well, the economic benefits from working are low if the two pensions are food.
And so if the carbon, for instance, sells the house and you need to have more of that,
they are economically very well off.
So that is the problem.
So within the same person, they can experience these different, what we have done,
and I will not go into that, but where we have tried to.
We have a battery of questions, well, which we have posed to early retirees.
And for instance, we said, those who say you left the labor market because you wanted more time
for leisure activities and traveling, how much do you agree with this?
And those who said fully agree and has not set course in any of the other,
we consider them to be jumpers.
You left the labor market because you wanted more time for the family jump.
You left the labor market because it hardly pay off economically to continue working.
That's cool.
And you left the labor market because it's accustomed to leave at the age within your field.
How much do you agree with this?
That's also cool.
And you left the labor market because your house was becoming too poor to continue working.
How much do you agree with this?
So we have 1,700 respondents and we have grouped them as push, pull,
and jump based on these questions.
And what about economic citizenship and economic hardship?
We have asked the retirees, I have difficulties in covering my living expenses.
Those who jump, they don't experience economic hardship.
Whereas especially males who are pushed out of the labor market,
8% of males who are pushed out of the labor market, they experience economic hardship.
And the same goes here.
I would not be able to pay an unexpected bill of Danish crowns 4,000.
It's much more common among those who have been pushed out of the labor market.
That is all of them in voluntary exit as compared to those who have voluntary left the labor market.
As to social integration, social citizenship,
there are also some marked differences.
It's difficult for me to make time pass.
It's not difficult for jumpers.
It's more difficult for those who have been pushed out of the labor market.
And whether they are involved or not involved in voluntary work
is very much also dependent on how they have left the labor market.
Those who have jumped out of the labor market are much more involved in voluntary work
as compared to those who are pushed out of the labor market.
Political citizenship, we also see some differences here.
I have no those who have little interest in politics.
That is those who are pushed out of the labor market.
And also those who disagree that politics is very, very complicated.
That is also those who have been pushed out of the labor market.
So in terms of economic, social, and political citizenship,
we see that the experience of retiring is very much dependent on the reason for retirement.
Okay.
To conclude, full explanations predominate
discourses about prolonging working lives everywhere in all over Europe.
What we have done is we have lost sight that other factors that economic incentives matter.
Supplies that economists, they have
taken over the whole discourse and they predominate
most of the discourses about the reason for early retirement.
And I would say that this incentive discourse
promoted by economists is a form of symbolic violence.
Because what we tell those who have retired or are in retirement,
we tell them that you could and should behave differently.
Although they have no other choice but to retire because many people are actually pushed out.
And those who are pushed out of the labor market, well, we cannot tell.
We tell them that you could and should have behaved differently.
Simultaneously, while we are making this symbolic violence,
we are also depriving them of their citizenship.
Because what we have seen is that those who are pushed out of the labor market,
they end to a larger extent than other retirees, they end up in economic hardship,
they end up in social isolation, and they lose.
But this is, of course, also a class issue.
Because those who are pushed out of the labor market, that's especially lower classes.
And we talk to the lower classes in this arrogant way.
We tell lower classes that they should actually behave differently.
And the middle classes and upper classes tell them,
because the middle classes, those in the middle classes that retire, they retire mostly on a
voluntary basis. So that also affects the class issue in place here.
Okay, thank you.
So, Pierre, thank you very much for this wonderful lecture.
I think for us, it's very interesting also because we have your lecture discuss the
relationship between, on one hand, the welfare state, on the other hand, the employment system,
and then also the individual, the behavior of the individuals and how these interact.
It's a very broad approach.
And I think, but I think it, so from all the international comparative research in which
I was involved, over which I was leading, Denmark always was the star, the paradise,
our paradise, such a wonderful welfare state.
But we did not include Sweden, usually.
So it's a pity to see that we did not, that there is another wheel paradise behind that.
It seems like that.
So a bit ironic.
So thank you very much.
And I would now like to open the discussion so you can ask questions and also give comments,
if you like.
Yeah.
I think we can start that.
Are there other questions?
Otherwise I ask Pierre to react.
No, I don't consider it to be a psychological approach.
But I think that the psychological approach here could be very important
because many of these data, well, you know, show some tendencies.
But we have also, I have, we have also made many qualitative interviews.
And of course, they show that this is not the, these, these, what I have shown you
are statistical tendencies that there is this probability that if you retire in that way,
then there's a probability that you end up like this.
But the reason why there are people do not automatically end up like in my analyzed
position very much depends on coping strategies.
And when we are just about to start to write a book based on 25 individual interviews
with early retirees, and now we are going to use coping, how do people cope with early retirement
when they retire.
So coping strategy will play of course also has to do well, your ability to cope with
a new situation, of course has to do with how you experience your new situation.
So here, of course, psychological factors are very important as well.
Patricia?
My question is about entrepreneurship, Coco.
Of course it is easy to understand what we mean with participation in society,
and from an angle of inclusion, it is a very easy to understand your idea about
in terms of respect to how to spend the time,
whether you've gone early or whether they've talked to you.
But I would like to know more about your idea
about citizenship, whether you want to march with them.
Because march with more is referring to rights and duties.
It's almost thinking a lot about duties also.
And these duties, you speak mainly about labor markets.
So the duty to participate in the labor market
and also the right to be good if you want to be good.
So yes, they're going to have to decide what's effective
on the right to do for citizenship.
And when you don't speak about the role,
the option is to take a role in citizenship.
This is much further developed concept than that of march.
And I'd like to know how you know the value
and what do you want to do?
Of course there is a right to be poor.
But the point is also, and of course I couldn't go into that in detail,
but in discussing the concept of marginalization, for instance,
it is often argued that if you are marginalized
and you are marginalized and you want to be marginalized,
then of course you cannot say to be marginalized.
So it's also part of this that of course you have the right to be poor
if you want to and then you cannot consider this as a loss of citizenship.
As to these labor market duties, that's of course related to right and obligations.
And I think that it is inscribed in most welfare systems.
In order, for instance, to get unemployment benefits,
there is the agreement between you and the system
when you get unemployment benefits, for instance,
that you generally want a job.
You do not claim unemployment benefits if you don't want to work.
So there is this work benefit, next to inscribed,
and all these different welfare benefits,
which of course Juste Spengarnassen did not use when he developed his concept of decommodification,
because that's only about rights, they looked at rights,
but there are always two sides.
And the degree of decommodification can be undermined
by the work demands embedded in exactly the same scheme.
But I also mentioned that in my presentation,
it was that if you are willing, if you want to work,
and if you are in a position to work, and you are excluded,
then of course you should be somehow compensated.
But you should not claim, for instance,
unemployment benefits if you are not genuinely seeking a job.
That's part of it.
As to the identity dimension, this concept of equal social wealth,
it's actually a quotation from Marshall himself.
So he develops actually, and it's very interesting to go back
and read this book about social citizenship again and again.
And I think that it was especially the feminist researchers,
Woodlister, which developed the concepts,
and Woodlister went back and read Marshall once again,
and it's actually very much her who has developed this three dimensions,
rights obligations, participation, and identity.
But I think that it's already in the work of Marshall himself.
Thank you.
There are huge differences in the economic structure,
but the differences in the economic structure should point to more,
for instance, work accidents in Sweden as compared to Denmark.
Because in Sweden, they have mining industries,
they have huge mining industries,
and they have huge forest industries, which is very dangerous to work there.
And they have many huge factories and huge companies like Volvo.
And so normally, when you look at Denmark-Sweden,
then Sweden is normally considered to be a high technology
and the work-intensive economy,
whereas Denmark is more service-oriented economy.
We do not have much industry in Denmark, and that is also,
as I discussed last night,
the huge difference between Denmark and Sweden is also the whole industrial structure.
In Denmark, it's based on the pig, the animal,
where there are many small industries servicing the agricultural sector,
and then we have huge slaughterhouses,
and then we have some or have some CPRs, and that's about that.
Whereas in Sweden, it's the iron and the woods
that are the basic foundation of the industry,
and therefore the industrial structure is more traditional industry as compared to Denmark.
I don't think that there is any awareness about this,
that our life expectancy is short.
And I cannot document it here now,
but I have an idea, at least, that when you die,
and also when you die early, then more early you start to get worn down or feel,
because what is quite interesting is, for instance,
that some studies have shown that the number of years with morbidity increases with shorter life expectancy.
Whereas, for instance, in Japan, when you get 90 years old,
you get 19 years old because you are healthy,
and then when you are 89 and a half, then you start to get sick and then you die.
Whereas in countries where, for instance, the life expectancy is low,
for instance, 65 or something like that, and then morbidity starts much earlier.
And we also see it in Denmark, for instance, where Turks, in Denmark, many foreign workers,
they come from areas in Turkey where they have been with bad nutrition,
and so they have been brought up in a not very healthy environment.
And, you know, they start to, well, they can't work when they are 45, 50 years old,
and they start this, yeah, they are worn down, they are finished,
and then they die much earlier than they, yeah, than they, you know.
But you can look at these, OVCD, they published this publication annually called Society at Lens,
and then you can see the morbidity, and it's actually, okay, I exaggerate a bit,
but it's quite clear that the more, well, you know, the longer you live,
the shorter the morbidity period.
And so, you may not be aware of it, but if this rule also goes for Denmark,
then perhaps the morbidity starts earlier in Denmark as compared to Sweden.
Which matters.
And in this regard, you mentioned that the Danes are more happy,
they are more social, they are more parties.
We know this from other research.
And from own experience, traveling as a tourist to Denmark and Sweden is completely different.
So, is it possible that in Denmark, those who live early,
that among those are kind of early jumpers, which do not exist so much in Sweden.
So, people who decide, now I have worked enough, now I do not wait until the end,
until I'm 65 or something, now I leave and I have a happy third period of my life.
Why the Swedes stay, because they do not know what else to do.
Something like that.
Well, I guess you are right in some way, because what is interesting is that
where we find also differences in the early retirement pattern in Denmark and Sweden is among women.
And there is a tendency in Denmark that when the husband, he leaves the labor market,
then the wife leaves together with him.
Whereas that's not the case in the rest of the Nordic countries.
It's not the case in Finland, it's not the case in Sweden, and it's not the case in Norway.
So, there may be some family cultures dominating the Danish society,
where when the husband leaves, then of course the wife should leave together with the husband.
Martin Coley, for instance, he has theorized a lot about this.
And he argues that within this field of early exit, early retirement,
that you can make a distinction between digital society and work society.
And that is also cultural differences, would you agree with that?
And then I'm quite sure that work society and the work is perhaps stronger in Sweden as compared to Denmark,
but on the other hand, if you analyze work commitment and work orientation,
then work orientation, there is this ISSP dataset where you have asked people all over Europe or in the world perhaps,
would you like to have a job even though you do not need the money?
And a larger proportion, the work orientation in general is the highest in the Scandinavian countries,
but it's even higher than my guess compared to Sweden.
There is a stronger orientation from how to work the legal market.
But the work ethic is probably nonetheless stronger in Sweden,
so if I should use this Coley concept about work societies versus national society,
I would probably say that, okay, Sweden is a work society whereas Denmark is more a national society.
That's one thing. Another thing which I have not mentioned, which I have planned to do, but which I forgot,
that was when I showed you this here, and I said, okay, even though there have been no change in incentives,
then the early retirement people have stopped going, well, you know, they are stopping going on early retirement.
And what is very important here, I think, is the public discourse and the public meaning about what is the early retirement phenomenon.
Because when the early retirement scheme was introduced in the late 1970s,
there was huge unemployment, there was youth unemployment, and when it was introduced,
it was outspoken that, you know, it was an altruistic action to retire early from the labor market
because then you would make space for younger people to get employed.
So it was, you actually did society a favor if you retired early.
So it was not at all associated with stigma.
Whereas over the last 10 years, 12 years, there has been this discourse in Denmark that, you know,
you are an enemy of society, more or less, if you retire early.
And that, of course, also may have changed the meaning of retiring early
and which also have had some influence on the action of people.
And those who were already out of the company told that nobody tried to maintain it.
And those who were through the work and then they were employed and started to take it.
So I was wondering if you asked people on their phones to take company,
and if one of you is interested in working there, maybe,
while they are out, put out, go back.
And so if there is a problem of protection,
if those people get pushed out or nobody wants to be here,
and those people did, are they fighting to maintain it?
Or is it really a problem of wanting to have a company like the people,
all the people and the other?
Well, we don't know anything about whether they are in the same company.
But we could trace it down if we wanted, but that would be a major job.
Because, you know, in Denmark we have the possibility to connect our survey data with register data.
And then we can, when we have the register data, then we can follow each individual from birth to,
and we can see where they were hired and how much they earned,
and we can follow them over the whole life course and see who they were married to
and how many children they have and everything.
So it could be done, but we didn't do that.
But maybe what is interesting, well, another way of answering your question,
because there is of course also some post-rationalization in some of these questions.
But what I think is very important is to emphasize that this early retirement scheme,
I think some economists have called it an ambivalent good.
And the ambivalence here is that the further away you are from it, the more generous it looks like.
Young people think, oh, it's extremely generous.
Politicians who are never going to use the system, they also think it's extremely generous.
But as a worker, when you approach early retirement age, then the closer you come,
then the more insecure you get.
And therefore, and when you are insecure, you are a bit out of balance.
And then you only need a small push in the one or other direction, then you stay or you leave.
Because it's also a question about how do you end your working life.
If you end your working life by getting fired, it's not a nice way to end your working life.
So it's better to announce, if you have heard nothing from management,
then you announce, I leave at the age of 60, because then I'm going to do this and that.
And if they at the age of 59 have been...
And if management had approached them and said, listen, we want you, don't leave,
then perhaps with this balance here, they might have stayed a couple of years more in the labor market.
But to avoid a situation of social suffering where you have to end your career by getting sacked,
then it's more, you can keep your self-respect if you say, I leave.
And so at least, and maybe that's also what appears in this data,
that many of those who have left have not been asked.
Maybe also because they have announced, I leave now, goodbye.
Okay, so we always invite the Nordic people, the scientists from the Nordic countries,
because they have so much freedom with their data.
So in Germany, we have the law and it's not allowed when we make a representative survey and ask people,
it's not allowed that we know their names or any kind of number, register number or something.
So it's really a very interesting difference.
So the next one is...
The benefits are higher in Denmark as compared to Sweden.
And there are no economic incentives really to postpone retirement in Denmark as compared to Sweden.
But if you want to jump or if you're pushed out, well, it doesn't matter really.
It's only this full mechanism and it cannot explain, it can't explain the differences.
And it could be interesting compared to Germany, because the early time rate is the same in Germany,
but in Germany there are.
I think if you go in 63, 80% you get 11% lower.
And if you go in 60, 80% you get credit of your pension.
Okay.
Yeah, I think there's something there, but you know what you should also consider then is if you, for instance, look at Poland.
They have no early retirement or retirement benefit in one, you know.
And there, the employment rate of older people are only about children.
So one should think that they are really incentive to be on the labour market, but it's extremely low.
Okay, so we make a stop now with the discussion.
Thank you very much, Pierre.
I think this was a very good presentation and most interesting.
And you see that it has inspired a very lively discussion also.
So thank you so much for your presentation.
And also thanks to all of you who have contributed to the discussion.
And yeah.
So then this is also the end of the lecture series of the Centre for Globalization and Governance in this semester.
This was the last lecture in this series.
Thank you.