Patterns of work and retirement in a pension system with a flexible old-age retirement age: a register study of Finnish employees and self-employed persons born in 1949

They use individual-level register data from Statistics Finland of the total Finnish birth cohort born in 1949 and sequence and cluster analyses  to identify typical trajectories of individuals’ transitions in and out of salaried work and self-employment and work in old-age retirement.

The results showed that employees who retired earlier on an old-age pension and who were not working afterwards had lower incomes. Their incomes also decreased after old-age retirement. Employees who worked for several years in retirement had higher incomes which remained stable between the ages of 62 and 70. They found two types of self-employed persons: those who continued working in retirement with high incomes and those who stopped working earlier and had lower incomes. The results indicate that inequalities between lower and higher income groups might become exacerbated in a fexible retirement system.