Physical functioning as a predictor of retirement: Has its importance changed over a thirty-year period in Sweden?

Many countries, including Sweden, are implementing policies aimed at delaying retirement and encouraging older workers to remain on the labour market for longer. During recent decades, there have been several major reforms to the pension and social security systems in Sweden. Moreover, the nature of occupations has shifted towards more non-manual and sedentary activities, older women are today almost as active in the labour market as men in Sweden, and physical functioning has improved over time. In this study, we investigate whether the importance of physical functioning as a predictor for retirement has changed over time, for women and men, respectively. We used four waves of nationally representative data from The Swedish Level of Living Survey from 1981, 1991, 2000, and 2010, together with income register data. We found that greater severity of musculoskeletal pain and mobility limitations increased the likelihood of retirement in all waves. Results from logistic regression models with average marginal effects and predictive margins showed that there is a trend towards physical functioning becoming less important for retirement towards the end of the study period, especially for women, when controlling for occupational-based social class, age, adverse physical working conditions, and job demands. People, especially women, reporting impaired physical functioning did not retire to the same extent as in previous decades. This indicates that people stayed longer in the labour market despite impaired physical functioning, which may have repercussions on well-being and quality of life. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10433-022-00725-y.