Instability in the Retirement Transition: Effects on Health and Well-Being in a Canadian Study

The relationship between employment and retirement is changing dramatically in industrialized societies, with a decreasing proportion of working life being spent in stable career progression. Many who retire from long-service career jobs now seek paid employment in bridge jobs before completely exiting the labor force. There is little research about the effects of employment transitions and instability in later life on health, but limited research on instability early in the working life does show a strong and significant relationship. In this article, the authors investigate the relationship between instability in the retirement transition and health in a sample of early retirees from a major Canadian telecommunications company. Instability is found to be associated with adverse health effects, with variability by gender and type of health measure. In addition, both objective and subjective transition characteristics were related to variability in health.