UM15-03: Working Conditions over the Life Course

Researchers

• Nicole Maestas
• Kathleen J. Mullen
• Jeffrey Wenger

Abstract

How do individuals’ working conditions change over the course of their working lives? Do older workers prefer different kinds of jobs than younger workers? For example, are they willing to accept earnings losses to transition to jobs that are less physically demanding or stressful? And to what extent are older workers less able than younger workers to perform certain kinds of jobs? How does this affect the wealth they accumulate as they approach retirement, and their Social Security retirement benefits? To help answer these questions, we propose augmenting an ongoing survey of working conditions of older workers (ages 50-70) to include younger workers ages 20-49, thereby fielding the first complete nationally representative survey on working conditions in the U.S.

Publications

• 2015 American Working Conditions Survey: First Findings (Research Brief)
• 2015 American Working Conditions Survey: First Findings (Working Paper)

Project Year

2015