Gender, Race and the Transition to Retirement among the Baby Boomers

Stipica Mudrazija, University of Texas at Austin

This paper investigates the transitional process from later career years to retirement among the baby boomers by modeling the determinants of their labor force participation and the retirement expectations. The emphasis is on the role of possible gender and racial/ethnic differences that have been documented in the literature, but have not been examined for the baby boomers. The results show women to be less likely to have full time employment and more likely to be in other, on average less lucrative, labor force statuses compared to men, even in the later stage of their career. They are also more likely to retire earlier. Racial and ethnic differences in the labor force status and retirement decision making between whites and major minority groups exist, but are largely accounted for by different demographic, socio-economic and other factors in the case of Hispanics, whereas blacks exhibit more complex dynamics, in particular black women.