Pensions, households, and local labor markets: The shaping of old-age economic activity in 1910

Empirical findings of extensive, turn-of-the-20th-Century, old-age withdrawal from work in the United States cannot be reconciled with structural-functional theories which assume that males worked in early-industrializing economies until too impaired to do otherwise. More recently, Two market demand-centered perspectives, a new structuralist perspective and a cultural (age-discrimination) perspective, have been used to explain old-age work withdrawal in this period. I expand the new structural model to include supply factors and the old-age household economy. I use linked national micro-data and county-level census data to examine the labor force participation of men (age 60 and over) in 1910 and find mixed support for the new structuralist model, Old-age withdrawal was systematically influenced by local labor market structures, but nor always in the expected theoretical direction. The household economy, racial differences, and access to national (Civil War) pensions were also strongly associated with old-age activity and withdrawal. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.