The Sloan Research Network on Aging & Work (SRNAW) is the only multidisciplinary research network focused on the aging of the workforce in the United States and abroad. Bringing together 235 members from 21 countries and more than 24 disciplines including economics, psychology, sociology, and management studies, SRNAW is a critical communication hub for the development of shared theories, frameworks, and research projects on aging and work. Funds from this grant support continued operation of the network along with activities designed to increase and strengthen member engagement in SRNAW. Additional grant funds support the development of plans for sustainable long-term financing of the network.

This grant funds a project led by Annette Bernhardt and Jesse Rothstein at the University of California, Berkeley to study the incidence and characteristics of independent contracting using tax return data for California from 2013 to 2017. The study will focus, in particular, on how both pre- and postretirement older workers combine independent contracting with other sources of income. Analyzing both W-2s and 1099s, Bernhardt and her team will look closely at persons with both types of incomes, permitting an assessment of whether independent contracting is the main or supplemental work activity. The richness of the dataset will also allow preliminary analysis of trends and patterns into and out of independent contracting work over time and correlations between independent contracting and race, gender, ethnicity, and age. The linked dataset created will also provide a significant resource to the state of California, to other states wanting to broaden data sources on independent contractors, and to researchers who can apply to use the datasets in their own work.

Changes in health, family, and work may make working longer difficult if not risky for substantial sections of the future U.S. population. This grant supports a community of scholars to produce 12 papers involving original research that will introduce a new framework for understanding current and future trends in working longer. The resulting volume—published either as a book or in a high-impact special journal issue—will examine multiple contexts that shape Americans’ likelihood of working longer, with emphasis on two cross-cutting themes of change across cohorts and heterogeneity across population subgroups, which have not been sufficiently studied to date. Under the leadership of Lisa Berkman of Harvard, this project will bring together a multidisciplinary group of distinguished scholars and invite them to collaborate with promising junior scholars, inviting the next generation of researchers to critically examine conventional thinking in this area. Grant funds will support three meetings so that authors can integrate objectives, gain important feedback from each other, and present their results in a policy-relevant setting. The project’s goals are threefold: to publish original research that brings critical, new perspectives to the scholarship on working longer; to build a new, intergenerational community of scholars who will set the agenda for future research; and to disseminate high-impact findings that have the potential to influence policymakers and public discourse.

The aging of the population and the concomitant demands on families to provide elder care raise important questions about the effectiveness of state-level Paid Family Leave (PFL) policies, which purport to protect adults who provide care to aging parents and spouses. This grant to H. Elizabeth Peters at the Urban Institute funds a study of how well PFL policies in California and New Jersey protect caregivers. The study will examine two separate sets of questions. First, Peters and her team will begin by examining differential outcomes on labor supply, economic well being, and health for older caregivers in states with PFL programs and states without, and within states both before and after the establishment of the programs. Second, the team will employ focus groups to explore and explain the curiously low utilization rate of PFL policies by workers.

This grant funds a project by Till von Wachter, professor of economics at UCLA and faculty director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA, to examine how retraining programs affect employment outcomes among older workers. Four research questions are at the core of von Wachter’s work: How has the incidence of employment instability and unemployment evolved for older workers? How well has the workforce system, particularly its job training opportunities, served older unemployed workers? What are the outcomes of job training and other services for older workers, in terms of employment and earnings? Has the ability of the system to improve older workers’ outcomes increased after recent legislative reforms? To shed light on these questions, Von Wachter has gained unprecedented access to a comprehensive linked dataset covering California’s workforce at the individual level. These data include quarterly earnings records for individual workers for each employment relationship, including identifiers for the employing establishment; quarterly employment, wage bill, and detailed industry affiliation for establishments; individual Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims, with detailed information on duration of claim, benefits received, worker demographics, occupation, and education; and detailed information on type of workforce service received, including type of training and job search assistance, the dates of service, as well as information from intake and exit interviews with caseworkers. Von Wachter’s work has the potential to advance understanding of how to use training to increase labor force participation of older workers and could inform local and national policymakers interested in improving the workforce system.

This grant provides partial funding for a project led by Martin Baily of the Brookings Institution to develop a new paradigm for work and retirement that incorporates working longer as an essential tool for increasing retirement security. Baily aims to develop the case for specific, actionable policy reforms that will encourage increased saving and enable longer working lives, as well as identifying policy reforms to enable consumers to have greater access to and understanding of retirement products in the private market. First, Baily will commission a series of detailed policy proposals that will be then presented in public forums—three public forums with three papers presented at each—directed at educating federal and (where appropriate) state policymakers. Each of the nine papers commissioned for the policy series will offer practical recommendations grounded in research that can be adopted by policymakers and private-sector actors. Suggested topics include how to make jobs more flexible, training for older workers, reducing the tax penalty for working longer, age discrimination, annuities, reverse mortgages, and long-term care insurance. After the briefings, Baily (with co-principal investigator Benjamin Harris) will then author a report that will lay out a comprehensive new vision for retirement. This will include three complementary components: reform of labor market policies to accommodate longer lives; creation of more robust private insurance markets and better products; and changes to the saving landscape, particularly for the growing population without access to traditional retirement accounts (for instance, freelance workers).

This grant funds a research network of economic scholars studying issues at the intersection of aging and work. Led by Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia, the network includes David Cutler of Harvard, Ellen Meara of Dartmouth, John Shoven of Stanford, Nicole Maestas of Harvard, Arie Kapetyn of University of Southern California, and Sita Slavov of George Mason, among others. Grant funds will support an annual workshop for network members and various other convenings allowing them to set a common research agenda, share ideas, and discuss and inform each other’s research. Over the next two years, network members will address various aspects of three topics: How public policy incentives affect work at older ages; what aspects of the workplace and employer practices can sustain work at older ages; and how older workers fit into the overall labor market. Overall, grant funding will support the production of at least eight academic papers on these topics.