Older women: pushed into retirement in the 1970s and 1980s by the baby boomers?

Because baby boomers crowded the labor market and competed with older women for part-time and part-year jobs, the labor force participation of older women declined slightly from 1970 to 1985; in more recent decades, women’s retirement age rose as “bridge jobs” became more available

The labor force participation of older women in the United States, like that of younger women, has changed dramatically over the past 40 years, but the patterns for the two groups have differed markedly. While the participation of women ages 25–34—particularly married women— increased dramatically in the 1970s and early 1980s before beginning to level off, the participation of women ages 55–69 actually declined marginally between 1970 and 1985, and only then began a pronounced and steady increase which has not yet abated. This article looks at why these patterns have diverged so markedly. Another time of divergence was the immediate post-World War II period, when the labor force participation of older women increased while that of young women declined.

Although changes in age at retirement affect the trends in labor force participation among older workers, the concept of retirement is notoriously difficult to define. In the Current Population Survey (CPS), the only available retirement information comes from a question asking why a woman was out of work in the previous year. But she might report herself as unemployed, or simply not in the labor force, in a period in which retirement might be defined retrospectively as a number of variables to examine the phenomenon, including not only self-reported retirement, but also annual hours worked, the propensity to be not in the labor force, and the receipt of Social Security benefits.

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