Retirees Are Also Stratified: Pre-Retirement Socio-Occupational Status and the Well-Being of Older Adults in Central Europe

Most stratification research concerns solely the economically active population and omits inactive seniors. Retirees are often treated as a separate and rather homogeneous social category. However, this approach is only partially valid. Retirees can still be differentiated in regard to their objective and subjective well-being, which is linked to their former occupations. Using large EU-SILC datasets for Central European countries, this article focuses on the effect of pre-retirement socio-occupational category on the well-being of retirees. The category is found to be an important explanatory variable after controlling for age, sex, marital status, and other characteristics. However, there are substantial differences among countries. While in Czechia, retirees are most homogeneous in regard to their objective and subjective well-being across socio-occupational categories, the differences are considerably larger in Hungary and Poland, and on a similar level as in our benchmark country, Austria.