Abstract

How are working life courses associated with retirement timing? This article investigates the relationship between the structure of the working and parental trajectories and the retirement timing of Italian women. Women work (for pay) fewer hours per week than men and often have shorter or interrupted work histories. They often work part-time or experience periods of inactivity due to care responsibilities. The aim of the study is, therefore, to analyse how these dynamics can influence retirement decisions. First, multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis were conducted to identify groups of typical work-family life courses from ages 20 to 50. Second, discrete-time event history models were utilised to estimate how these groups are associated with retirement timing. Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) were used. The results indicate that Italian women who experience more unstable careers with periods of inactivity in combination with the presence on two or more children are less likely to retire than women with continuous careers