Kene Henkens

Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute | NIDI

This chapter considers the central role retirement plays in social stratification structures in later life. Retirement transition is embedded in social structures and affects an individual’s post-retirement position. In recent decades, retirement has departed from a traditional model of a clear-cut event and a static life period toward a more varie...

Is the trust that participants have in their pension fund affected by its funding ratio (i.e., asset/liabilities ratio)? Based on survey, carried out in October 2021, among Dutch pension fund participants we link our survey data to the funding ratio of their pension fund as registered by the pension regulator. First, we show that the level of the f...

Objectives: This study aimed to examine whether (i) metabolic syndrome (MetS) increases the risk for premature employment exit and (ii) a dose-response relationship exists between an increasing number of MetS components and premature employment exit among middle-aged and older workers. Methods: A sample of N=60 427 Dutch workers (40-64 years old...

Prior studies have examined why people emigrate from their country of birth during retirement. By focusing on describing motives for international retirement migration, these studies overlook what inhibits or enables people to have particular motives to migrate. We collected data from a representative sample of Dutch nationals aged 66–90 who were b...

Given the trend towards labour market flexibility in various European countries, this article examines whether the offered type of employment contract has an impact on young people’s ratings of the attractiveness of a job. It empirically assesses the notion that young people’s preference for secure employment increases as they transition into adult...

Objectives: Remaining active in older adulthood is widely endorsed by governments and policy makers as a way of promoting public health and curbing welfare spending. Despite links between greater leisure activity in older adulthood and better health, cognitive function, and subjective wellbeing, there is a dearth of research investigating the impa...

Purpose – Flexible staffing arrangements have become a permanent feature of employment in many industrial societies. This article examines how employers perceive the consequences of using flexible staffing arrangements. It presents and assesses theoretically informed hypotheses on organisational situations in which negative consequences are more li...

Voor organisaties is een reputatie van betrouwbaarheid van groot belang. In de praktijk nemen zij vaak klanttevredenheid als graadmeter voor dit vertrouwen. Maar is dat wel terecht? De stilzwijgende veronderstelling is dat de determinanten van tevredenheid dezelfde zijn als die van vertrouwen. Dit artikel laat voor de pensioensector zien dat dit maar t...

Retirement transition plays a key role in social stratification structures in later life. On the one hand, the retirement process is embedded in social structures, and the pre-retirement position influences the form of exit individuals can follow. On the other hand, the quality of the retirement transition affects an individual's post-retirement po...

Voor werknemers die bij hun pensioenfonds sparen voor hun pensioen blijft het vaak een vraagteken of ze genoeg hebben gespaard. Sommigen willen hun pensioenfeiten kennen terwijl anderen liever pensioeninformatie vermijden. Op basis van nieuw NIDI-onderzoek blijkt dat de meeste deelnemers tot de eerste categorie behoren en een kleine minderheid tot...

Background: In the last few decades, a substantial number of older adults have migrated to new countries around the retirement age to raise their quality of life, a phenomenon that has been labeled as international retirement migration. The scattered body of research on this type of migration across disciplines has made it difficult to get an overv...

Het inzetten van oudere werknemers kan werkgevers helpen om de krapte op arbeidsmarkt het hoofd te bieden. Leeftijdsnormen stellen echter grenzen aan de werving van oude werknemers van buiten een organisatie. Een normstellende overheid kan de arbeidsmarktparticipatie van oudere werknemers vooruit helpen door expliciet deze sociale normen te beïnvlo...

Oudere werkzoekenden hebben het moeilijk op de arbeidsmarkt. Helpen verschuivende sociale normen over wie (te) oud is om de kansen van ouderen op de arbeidsmarkt te vergroten?

As the workforce ages, organizations are increasing their efforts to retain retirement-eligible workers to avoid human capital shortages and preserve knowledge reservoirs. Nevertheless, the potential factors and underlying mechanisms relating to the retention of retirement-eligible workers have rarely been examined. The current research investigate...

Background Chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease or type two diabetes mellitus are related to work exit types such as unemployment and work disability. It is unknown whether metabolic syndrome as a risk factor preceding these chronic diseases is related to work exit type. Metabolic syndrome is present when people have at least three out of t...

Trust in pension providers by participants is essential because pension providers try to fulfill their pension promises in a fundamentally uncertain world. Reforms and crises are therefore the ultimate testing ground for pension trust. In this paper we estimate with repeated cross-sectional survey data how trust and distrust in Dutch pension funds...

Public policies encourage later retirement, but they often do not account for discrepancies in the capacity for extending working lives. This paper studies trends and inequalities in extending working lives between 1990 and 2019 from gender and education perspectives in seven countries (Australia, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, United K...

Quantitative research on how grandparents fare when looking after grandchildren has mainly focused on general wellbeing indicators, showing that grandparenting is linked to higher wellbeing. However, global assessments of wellbeing reveal little about activity-specific experiences and only indirectly provide insights about how grandparents experien...

Objectives: Many retirees continue to work in retirement, but the temporal dynamics of this process are not well understood. This paper examined the extent to which retirees increase, decrease, and exit their work engagement over time. We hypothesized that different motives for post-retirement work-financial, social, personal, and organizational-h...

With increasing retirement ages, older workers are working longer while being newly diagnosed with chronic health conditions (CHCs). Our knowledge on how newly diagnosed CHCs influence older workers’ vitality and worries is limited. We examine how four newly diagnosed CHCs affect older workers’ vitality and worries about physical and mental functio...

Pensioen is geen hobby van jongeren en dat blijkt ook wel uit het zoekgedrag naar pensioeninformatie. Opvallend is echter dat de meest intensieve zoektocht naar informatie pas in ongeveer de laatste vijf tot tien jaar voor pensionering plaatsvindt, een moment waarop wijziging van financiële plannen niet of nauwelijks meer kunnen worden gerealiseerd...

Concerns about low fertility rate regularly lead conservative politicians to call for higher birth rates by offering incentives, like baby bonuses. Will such alternative policy efforts effect a change? A survey among European demographers suggests that baby bonuses are perceived as highly ineffective.

Background: This study investigates (1) whether different employment transition types (ie, unemployment, work disability, early retirement and regular retirement) are associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) incidence among older workers (50-64 years) and (2) whether occupational group moderates the association between employment transition type...

Sinds jaar en dag is bekend dat zzp'ers niet veel sparen voor pensioen en vaak worden de hoge kosten van een goed pensioen opgevoerd als reden hiervoor. Vertrouwen in de belangrijkste spelers in de derde pijler-pensioenaanbieders wordt vaak over het hoofd gezien. In deze bijdrage laten Van Dalen, Damman en Henkens zien dat het wantrouwen dat banken...

In tegenstelling tot het gezegde dat je oude bomen niet moet verplanten blijkt dit niet te gelden voor pensioenmigranten. Nieuw onderzoek leert dat de meeste pensioenmigranten in het eerste jaar na hun migratie niet veel serieuze problemen hebben ervaren en zich over het algemeen gelukkiger achten dan voordat ze emigreerden.

Vertrokken vroeger gepensioneerden bij hoge uitzondering, tegenwoordig kijkt men niet meer op van pensionado's die verhuizen naar het buitenland. Bij de keuze om te emigreren spelen vele zaken een rol. Mensen worden aangetrokken door beter weer of door de rust en natuur, anderen vertrekken omdat ze niet meer tevreden zijn in Nederland.

Het Nederlandse pensioenstelsel geniet internationaal onder experts een hoge waardering. Uit nieuw onderzoek onder de Nederlandse bevolking blijkt echter dat de tevredenheid met het pensioenstelsel geleidelijk afneemt. Echter, over onderliggende onderdelen van het pensioenstelsel, zoals pensioeninkomen en pensioenleeftijd, tekent zich een groeiende...

There is widespread speculation that baby boomers will make significant changes to the retirement landscape. Some attribute these changes, at least in part, to countercultural movements this generation pioneered during the sixties and seventies. However, empirical investigation into the long-term impact of countercultural identification in youth is...

Vanaf 2023 mogen pensioendeelnemers bij pensionering eenmalig (maximaal) tien procent van hun opgebouwde pensioenvermogen opnemen. In hoeverre speelt het vertrouwen in de beloftes van pensioenuitvoerders een rol bij de interesse om gebruik te maken van deze eenmalige uitkering?

This report describes a data collection among Dutch retirement migrants in 40 foreign countries and the way to analyze the data.

Objectives In previous research on retirement, what individuals value in life is often assumed to remain stable after the transition into retirement. However, retirement exposes individuals to new social settings and might thus prompt them to re-evaluate their life orientations. Quantitative empirical knowledge about this process is limited, though...

This study investigates the effects of phased retirement on vitality and how this effect differs for workers dealing with work, family and health strain and low levels of baseline vitality. We used two waves of the NIDI Pension Panel Survey, conducted in 2015 and 2018, in the Netherlands. Data from 1,247 older workers, of whom 10% opted for phased...

This study investigates whether the incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS), and its components, differs by occupational group among older workers (45-65 years) and whether health behaviors (smoking, leisure-time physical activity, diet quality) can explain these differences. We analyzed data from older workers (N=23 051) from two comprehensive meas...

Background. Chronic health conditions (CHCs) pose stark detrimental effects on the health and abilities of older workers. The extent of these effects depend on the CHC, the time since its diagnosis and the type of health measure: a rarely explored combination of heterogeneities. Objective. This study examined how four existing and newly diagnosed C...

Vertrouwen in politiek en maatschappij staat herhaaldelijk ter discussie, maar in welke mate werkt dat door op het vertrouwen in pensioeninstituties? Op basis van LISS-data uit februari 2020 worden twee hoofdvragen geanalyseerd: (1) Welke homogene groepen ten aanzien van vertrouwen in politieke en maatschappelijke instituties bestaan er in de Neder...

Jongeren hebben veel meer en langer dan vroeger te maken met flexibele arbeidscontracten. Dit blijft niet zonder gevolgen voor de samenleving. Maar hoe denken werkgevers over de flexibilisering van de arbeidsmarkt? Brengt het hen vooral voordelen of is de flexibilisering doorgeschoten? Nieuw onderzoek onder Nederlandse werkgevers laat zien dat het...

Employers are instrumental in the growth of non-standard employment, which exposes predominantly younger workers to higher levels of insecurity. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical lens, this article identifies which considerations, both positive and negative, underlie employers’ decision making with regard to the use of flexible contracts for y...

Increasing statutory retirement ages around the world are forcing employees to prolong their working lives. We study the different ways in which mid- and late-career workers respond to such changes. We distinguish between negative emotions about working longer, cognitive engagement with prolonged employment, and proactive behavior to facilitate lon...

Public policies encourage later retirement, but they often do not account for discrepancies in the capacity for extending working lives. This paper studies trends and inequalities in extending working lives over the last three decades in a gender-specific and comparative perspective of seven countries (Australia, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Switz...

Objectives Examine the effects of prevalent and newly diagnosed arthritis on changes in perceived physical demands and general work stress. Methods Conditional change logistic regression models examined the strength of association between arthritis and perceived (1) work stress and (2) physical demands, using data from the NIDI Pension Panel Study...

In dit artikel onderzoeken we het vertrouwen in de pensioensector in 2020 (precorona) en hoe dit vertrouwen samenhangt met het vertrouwen in politieke en maatschappelijke instituties. Drie vragen zullen achtereenvolgens worden behandeld: (1) Welke homogene groepen ten aanzien van vertrouwen in politieke en maatschappelijke instituties bestaan er in...

De invoering van het nieuwe pensioenstelsel voltrekt zich vooralsnog in een omgeving waarbij deelnemers niet bovenmatig geïnteresseerd zijn in deze ontwikkeling. De onzekerheid die gepaard gaat met het nieuwe stelsel wordt vooral door werknemers geassocieerd met een gemiddeld lagere pensioenuitkering. Het actiever omgaan met pensioen lijkt vooral o...

Vitality is the feeling of physical and mental aliveness. Vitality benefits individual, organizational and societal well-being. However, we know much less about the dynamics in the levels of vitality and its’ precursors. This study investigates the effects of retirement on vitality and how this effect differs between manual and non-manual workers a...

Kennis van financiële zaken is van groot belang voor zelfredzaamheid. Dat geldt zeker ook voor de grootste financiële zaak waar burgers mee te maken hebben: het pensioen. Mannen blijken echter veel meer dan vrouwen interesse voor en kennis van pensioenzaken te hebben.

What role does population play in thinking about the problem of climate change and some of its solutions? In a survey conducted between February and April 2020, we asked European demographers to state their views on the relationship between climate change and population developments, and asked them to rate their concern about climate change and oth...

Phased retirement can be an important arrangement for societies making the transition to an older work force. However, the uptake of these type of programs is quite low. In this paper we compare the older worker and employer perspective on using these programs. While older workers point the importance of organizational barriers for refraining from...

This study investigates whether the incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS), and its components, differs by occupational group among older workers (45–65 years) and whether health behaviors (smoking, leisure-time physical activity, diet quality, and alcohol consumption) can explain these differences. A sample of older workers (N = 34,834) from the N...

When does fertility in a country become so low or so high that a government needs to intervene? This paper sheds light on this population policy question, based on a worldwide survey among demographers. We examine how professionals' policy preferences regarding fertility levels are affected by their views on the impacts of population growth/decline...

Deeltijdpensioen wordt in veel pensioenregelingen als een keuzemogelijkheid aangeboden. Vaak wordt het als een ideale mogelijkheid gezien om een carrière af te bouwen. Toch maken weinig werknemers er gebruik van. Maar waarom eigenlijk niet?

Het pensioenvertrouwen is redelijk stabiel gebleven in het afgelopen jaar, ondanks de coronacrisis. Maar achter deze stabiliteit gaat divergentie schuil: onder gepensioneerden is het vertrouwen in pensioenfondsen toegenomen, terwijl het onder werkenden ongeveer gelijk is gebleven. Nadere analyse van de NIDI-Netspar Pensioenmonitor wijst uit dat gep...

Hoe belangrijk is bevolkingsbeleid bij het tegengaan van de opwarming van de aarde, en welke rol speelt de bevolkingsgroei bij de opwarming van de aarde? Uit een onderzoek onder Europese bevolkingswetenschappers blijkt dat men zich weliswaar grote zorgen maakt over klimaatverandering en de rol van de mens, maar men is zeer verdeeld over de vraag of...

Zorgen over een laag kindertal leiden bij sommige politici bij tijd en wijle tot de roep om het kindertal te stimuleren, bijvoorbeeld door een babybonus. Is dat effectief gezinsbeleid? Een enquête onder Europese bevolkingsexperts laat zien dat maatregelen die het combineren van werk en gezin vergemakkelijken, zoals gratis kinderopvang, als meest ef...

This chapter focuses on the changing world of work and retirement. Statistics show that labor force participation of older adults has changed over the past decades. Crude participation rates mask the dynamics that are taking place in the careers of older adults. Under the umbrella of a gradual detachment from the labor force we find many different...

Investments in lifelong learning may create unsatisfactory results, and this could potentially contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. We argue that the process is related to the accumulation of opportunities and barriers for participation in training, which can lock individuals in disadvantageous path-dependent trajectories. We take a long...

Background. Past studies have revealed the effect of retirement on various health measures. None, however, have studied retirement’s effect on vitality, a holistic measure of physical and mental health. To boot, very few studies have addressed the heterogeneity in the health consequences of retirement. This study investigates the effect of retireme...

Due to policy reforms, early exit from the labor market has decreased substantially and people are participating in the labor market until much higher ages than before. As a result, there are increasingly many people that struggle to continue working until they can comfortably retire, for example due to chronic health conditions or having to provid...

Het groeiende aandeel flexibele arbeidsverbanden zorgt vooral onder jonge werkenden (jonger dan 35 jaar) voor een hoge mate van onzekerheid over toekomstig werk en inkomen. Het perspectief van werkgevers op de inzet en de gevolgen van flexibele arbeid voor jongeren is tot op heden onderbelicht gebleven. Deze studie presenteert bevindingen van een s...

Objectives Research on retirees’ engagement in informal caregiving, formal volunteering, and grandparenting often views retirement as a permanent exit from the workforce. Retirement processes are, however, increasingly diverse: some retire fully while others remain in paid work after retirement from a career job. A relevant but understudied questio...

The proportion of workers with chronic health conditions (CHCs) will increase over the years as pension reform is increasing the age of retirement in many European countries. This will increase the percentage of older adults with CHCs performing highly demanding work. This study sought to examine the association between common CHCs [cardiovascular...

Het pensioenlandschap is de laatste tien jaar danig veranderd. En ook de komende tien jaar zal dit landschap nog verder veranderen, waarbij langer doorwerken het parool zal zijn. Het besef hierover is onder jongeren echter maar beperkt doorgedrongen. Werkgevers en oudere werknemers maken zich wel zorgen over het langer doorwerken, en de toegenomen...

The current COVID-19 crisis teaches organizations and households harsh lessons about the necessity of having buffers, to deal with the consequences of the COVID-19 virus. The financial fragility of households and the rising proportion of people becoming obese calls for intensified efforts, both by individuals and employers to create financial buffe...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to see whether attitudes toward older workers by managers change over time and what might explain development over time. Design/methodology/approach A unique panel study of Dutch managers is used to track the development of their attitudes toward older workers over time (2010–2013) by focusing on a set of quali...

Met de sluiting van het pensioenakkoord in juni 2019 lijkt de pensioendiscussie – althans voor het moment – in rustiger vaarwater te zijn gekomen. Het pensioenakkoord sloeg een brug tussen twee doelstellingen. Enerzijds het toekomstbestendig maken van het stelsel van oudedagsvoorzieningen dat onder invloed van de vergrijzing steeds verder onder dru...

Wanneer is de vruchtbaarheid in een land te hoog en wanneer te laag? Wereldwijd onderzoek onder demografen laat zien dat de meesten zich geen zorgen maken zolang het gemiddeld kindertal schommelt tussen 1,4 en 3,0 kinderen per vrouw.

Deeltijdpensioen wordt gezien als een veelbelovend instrument om langer doorwerken voor meer mensen mogelijk te maken. In dit artikel onderzochten we het gebruik van en de belangstelling voor deeltijdpensionering, en de belemmeringen om van deeltijdpensioen gebruik te maken. Dit vanuit het perspectief van de werknemer én de werkgever. Er is gebruik...

Het pensioenakkoord biedt mogelijkheden om voor mensen met zware beroepen afspraken te maken over lagere pensioenleeftijden. Een belangrijke uitdaging hierbij is om voor iedereen tot een ‘eerlijke’ pensioenleeftijd te komen. Maar wat vinden Nederlanders eigenlijk eerlijk?

Het generatiepact is al een aantal jaren werkzaam binnen Nederlandse organisaties: een regeling waarbij ouderen met behoud van pensioenopbouw geleidelijk kunnen afbouwen om zo ook jongeren een kans te geven. NIDI-onderzoek laat zien dat belangstelling voor een dergelijke regeling groot is, maar ook dat het zwaartepunt van de belangstelling niet bij...

Background and objectives: Longitudinal perspectives on how organizations react to workforce aging are missing in the literature. In this study, we fill this gap and ask how organizations deal with older workers, how their approaches change over time, and in which sectors of the economy and types of organizations the changes were most profound. R...

With an increasing retirement age, more older adults are combining employment with informal care-giving responsibilities. However, little is known about how older workers experience care-giving activities next to their paid jobs. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how the work situation ( i.e. working hours, occupational status and perce...

Background: older workers experiencing chronic health conditions (CHCs) are more likely to retire early. The different pathways through which CHCs stimulate retirement preferences, however, remain largely unexplored. Objective: we present a more comprehensive model in which we test the different pathways through which four specific CHCs-arthriti...

Employers are central actors in shaping employment opportunities for older workers and facilitating longer working lives. In this chapter, we study the ways in which employers have adapted their attitudes and organizational policies and practices to deal with an aging workforce. We do so by comparing data from two large surveys on the topic of work...

This study goes beyond a purely financial perspective to explain why single older workers prefer to retire later than their partnered counterparts. We aim to show how the work (i.e., its social meaning) and home domain (i.e., spousal influence) contribute to differences in retirement preferences by relationship status. Analyses were based on multia...

Older workers experiencing chronic health conditions (CHCs) are more likely to retire early. Current literature, however, lacks knowledge on the different pathways through which CHCs stimulate retirement preference. Earlier research is highly fragmented. Some studies have found CHCs to impact vitality, work limitations, or subjective life expectanc...

The interdependence between partners raises considerable interest in the sociology of life course, work and families. Partner influences play a particularly important role in the work domain, because each partner’s work decisions have profound effects on the couple as a whole. In contrast to previous research, this study pays detailed attention to...

OBJECTIVE: Retirement is a major life transition. People gain a considerable amount of free time, but also loose the benefits from work. Volunteering has been identified as a gratifying way to fill that time and to compensate some retirement-related losses, but is stratified by educational level. Research on how retirement changes volunteering beha...

Met het nieuwe pensioenakkoord komt de regering tegemoet aan de kritiek op het rappe tempo van het verhogen van de AOW-leeftijd. De prijs die hiervoor betaald wordt door de regering is te overzien. Echter, het stelsel is voor velen te complex geworden, met als gevolg dat mensen niet meer weten wanneer ze nu met pensioen gaan.

Studies suggest that organizations across countries are more likely to send older staff members to early retirement than retain them, but there are signals that employers are increasingly showing support for longer working lives. However, a large-scale, longitudinal perspective on how organizations have reacted to demographic challenges is missing...

The interdependence between partners raises considerable interest in the sociology of life course, work, and families. Partner influences play a particularly important role in the work domain, because each partner's work decisions have profound effects on the couple as a whole. In contrast to previous research, this article pays detailed attention...

Retirement is a major life-course transition for which some people plan more than others. Given that planning positively affects retirement adjustment, it is important to investigate the heterogeneity in retirement planning and its antecedents. While financial preparation has been thoroughly investigated, little is known about the activities older...

Governments increasingly focus on extending working lives by raising public pension ages and in some cases by linking pension ages to changes in the life expectancy. This study offers novel insights into how employers perceive such reforms and their consequences for their organization. A survey among employers (N = 1,208) has been carried out in 20...

De verhoging van de AOW-leeftijd is niet ongemerkt aan Nederlanders voorbijgegaan. Maar weten zij werkelijk hoe sterk de verhoging zal zijn volgens de huidige regels? Op basis van nieuw NIDI-onderzoek blijkt dat Nederlanders de leeftijd waarop zij AOW-gerechtigd zijn zwaar onderschatten. De voortdurend verschuivende AOW-leeftijd had al kwaad bloed...

Background and objectives: Given their increasing prevalence with age, chronic health conditions (CHCs) are substantially affecting older workers and organizations. An important question is whether and how flexible work arrangements and organizational climates may help to reduce the work limitations experienced by older workers. Grounded on the Jo...

This article analyses the role of age stereotypes in the employability of older people. Unlike in existing studies, we shift emphasis from a direct consideration of stereotypes, focusing instead on skill requirements during recruitment. Using five waves of an employer survey from Poland, we assess how the likelihood of recruiting people over 50 yea...