“I’m actually having way too much fun.”
The arc of women’s working lives is changing — reaching higher levels when they’re younger and stretching out much longer — according to two new analyses of census, earnings and retirement data
that provide the most comprehensive look yet at women’s career paths.
But most of the time, Ms. Goldin and Mr. Katz found, women are working longer
because of decisions they made much earlier in their lives — to get an education and spend years building a career.
Of those still working, Ms. Goldin said, “They’re in occupations in which they really have an identity.” She added, “Women have more education, they’re in jobs
that are more fulfilling, and they stay with them.” (Ms. Goldin happens to be an example of the phenomenon, as a 70-year-old professor and researcher.)
And I love the joy of getting that big commission check.”
There is just one period of life when women are less likely to be working than in previous generations: their late 30s
and early 40s, according to the other new paper, by Ms. Goldin and Joshua Mitchell, a senior economist at the Census Bureau.
Of women born between 1945 and 1949, about 50 percent in all education groups were working at age 64, compared with 60 percent of college graduates.
That means that even if they take breaks to care of children, they are likely to return to work and to work past a typical retirement age.
If people work when they’re younger, economists say, they’re more likely to work when they’re older.
Nearly 30 percent of women 65 to 69 are working, up from 15 percent in the late 1980s, one
of the analyses, by the Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, found.
