As many countries enter aging societies and face high costs for public pension funds, governments encourage people to work until later age. Policy makers have shifted their interest to the forces that influence older adults’ decisions on the timing of continued work and bridge job employment that is newly emerging trends. With extended life expectancy and the lack of social security fund for pension, old-age poverty rate has increased in recent years and many older adults tend to delay retirement or engage in bridge employment after retirement in East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian countries that traditionally emphasize individual's responsibility for preparing for retirement.

Studies have explored how the retirement decision-making process among older people is socio-economically stratified. Given that major norm of family behavior of Asia is filial piety and the decision of retirement timing is likely to be influenced by family circumstances, the association between intergenerational relationships and trends of older parents' labor force participation should be systematically examined. The old-age care services provided by the country and communities have been limited in many Asian societies although the role of adult children in supporting parents has been changed as they face rapid demographic transitions. Reduced co-residence rates and increased rates of elderly who live alone encouraged government to develop policies that target vulnerable older adults. Therefore, governments need to strategize how they can have a sustainable system to support a growing elderly population especially those who exit the labor force and are detached from family. studies that compare various systematic factors that affect early- and late- retirement would be important to develop sustainable pension and social security programs. Furthermore, longitudinal analyses of the socioeconomic impacts of deferring mandatory retirement on productivity among the elderly can extend theoretical perspectives in research fields such as social demography, public policy, sociology of family, and gerontology. However, the association between public old-age support, role of extensive family members, and retirement process has been less studied. Comprehensive examinations on the interrelations of the factors at multilevel that affect the transition processes from work to full retirement are necessary to this area.

The conference welcomes both qualitative and quantitative studies with cross-national, cross-sectional, or longitudinal survey analyses based on the aging population in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The main topics of the conference are the impacts of inter-generational relationships, family structure, cultural factors and policies on retirement and labor force participation among older populations in Asia. The following list includes some of topics that we expect papers to explore:

• Definition and conceptualization of dynamic retirement process.
• Exploring factors at individual- and family-level that may affect the transition processes from work to full retirement.
• Comparative research that address country-level systematic differences in retirement process and social engagement among older adults.
• Cross-level investigations that address the interactions among factors at macro-mess-micro levels in relation to work participation and healthy aging.
• The relationships between the old-age support policies (e.g., pension and health care insurance), retirement timing, and private support.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS HAS ENDED

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by end August 2017.

CONTACT DETAILS

Conference Convenors

Dr Lee Yeonjin
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | arileey@nus.edu.sg

Prof Yeung Wei-Jun Jean
Asia Research Institute, Centre for Family and Population Research, and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore
E | ariywj@nus.edu.sg

Secretariat

Ms TAY Minghua
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg