The Role of Physical, Cognitive and Interpersonal Occupational Requirements and Working Conditions on Disability and Retirement

This proposed research project is an expansion of the MRDRC grant UM21-05, where we investigated the role of physical occupational requirements on retirement transitions using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and from the first wave of the Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS). In that grant, our ability to examine cognitive and social/interpersonal occupational requirements was limited because data from the second wave of ORS, which includes data on these requirements, was too incomplete. In this project expansion, we will use updated, second wave ORS data, incorporating data from an additional year. This will allow the study of cognitive and social/interpersonal job demands, in addition to physical job demands. Moreover, we will expand the set of occupational requirements we examine to include environmental working conditions, and we will expand the set of outcomes to include disability status.