Previous research finds that members of the working class have a higher risk of early retirement compared to professionals because they are pushed into early retirement. This indicates that not all workers can respond to incentives to extend their working life. Yet, little previous work has been conducted to quantify systematically the extent to which push factors explain why members of the working class have a higher risk of early retirement compared to professionals. Using longitudinal data on Danish workers, the results suggest that members of the working class have an increased risk of early retirement compared to professionals, but poor health, previous spells of unemployment and low job quality mediate a large part of this effect. Among men, the push factors mediate 57 and 86 per cent of the effect of social class on early retirement for skilled manual and unskilled manual workers, respectively. Among women, the push factors mediate 43 and 55 per cent of the effect of social class on early retirement for skilled manual and unskilled manual workers, respectively. Overly physical work demands is the most important mediator, which explains between 23 and 31 per cent of the total effect of belonging to the working class on early retirement. Moreover, the magnitudes of the indirect effects of the push factors depend on the particular pathway into retirement.

Faced with demographic ageing, European policy makers since the mid-1990s have taken a turn from fostering early retirement to promoting longer working life by reducing early exit incentives and facilitating work continuation. However, it remains open whether these reforms are yet reflected in the retirement plans and preferences of future pensioners’ cohorts. Using most recent data on desired retirement ages from the fifth wave of the European Social Survey (2010/11 wave), this paper empirically investigates how far current policy reforms are in line with the retirement age preferences of older workers aged 45 and over. Results show that older workers approaching retirement ages still intend to retire before the politically envisioned age of 65, and in many cases also before nationally defined standard retirement ages. Despite visible progress in implementing active ageing measures, the challenge of motivating older workers to continue working until or even beyond retirement ages thus remains. At the same time, there are regime-specific problem groups that face difficulties in adjusting to the active ageing paradigm of longer working life. Especially in countries with little employment support, those with unstable work careers, employment interruptions and few financial resources are at a high risk of being crowded out from late career employment and thus from the possibility of ensuring a decent standard of living in old age.