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The Link between Social Research and Social Policy Options: Reverse Retirement as a Case in Point

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

Lynn McDonald*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to:/Les demandes de reproduction doivent être adressées à: Lynn McDonald, Centre for Applied Social Research, Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A1

Abstract

Social gerontologists have observed that economic determinism is problematic to the policy-making process and that there are too few inputs from other sources. The purpose of this research is to illustrate how social research can inform the current pension debate which revolves around the issues of raising the age of retirement, the merits of partial retirement and the adequacy of the new Seniors Benefit. An analysis of data on post-retirement workers is presented using the Survey of Ageing and Independence as an example of how social research can make a difference to choices about public pension policies.

Résumé

Résumé

Les gérontologues sociaux ont remarqué que le déterminisme économique suscite des problèmes á l'égard de l'élaboration des politiques et qu'il existe trop peu de données émanant d'autres sources. Le but de cette recherche est d'illustrer comment la recherche sociale peut alimenter le débat actuel entourant la question de l'augmentation de l'âge de la retraite, les mérites de la retraite partielle et la pertinence des avantages accordés aux aînés. On présente une analyse de données sur des travailleurs á la retraite en utilisant l'Enquête sur le vieillissement et l'autonomie á titre d'exemple sur la façon dont la recherche sociale peut avoir un effet sur les diverses modalités du régime de retraite de l'État.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Association on Gerontology 1997

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper appeared in A Time for Retirement, a report for the Centre for Applied Social Research. This research was funded by the National Welfare grants Program of Human Resources Development Canada through the Seniors Independence Research Program.

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