MIDCAREER PATHS AND PASSAGES--CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND RETIREMENT PLANNING

This study aims to investigate the career development and retirement planning of members of the baby boom cohort, in the context of both institutional changes (such as career development services) and larger scale changes in the social contracts related to occupational security, family roles and relationships, and gender. Specifically, we aim to collect two waves of data on both a corporate and community sample of approximately 600 males and 600 females, ages 35 to 54 in 1999 (including married couples) in upstate New York to be used in conjunction with already collected data on the pre-baby boom cohort (The Cornell Retirement and Well-Being Study) to investigate the links between career paths, planning, productivity and well-being. Our goals are: 1) to document the midstream occupational paths, including preparations and expectations regarding retirement or second careers, of the baby boom cohort, considering similarities and differences across subgroups. 2) to consider the interdependence of the career paths and retirement planning of husbands and wives, 3) to formulate and test models of adaptive and maladaptive paths, with regard to both health/well-being and productivity, and 4) tot investigate the usage (and implications of particular career development institutional arrangements emerging in response to the new corporate focus on workers' self-management on their career paths.