Table 1.

Descriptive statistics for study sample U.S. Health and Retirement Study 1998–2008 (N = 1684)

	Weighted % or mean (SD)
	Men (N = 647)	Women (N = 1037)
Sociodemographic characteristics in 1998
Age (range 52–56 years)	53.86 (1.36)	53.83 (1.33)
White	86.32 %*	83.67 %*
Black	8.99 % %*	11.06 %*
Other race/ethnicity	4.52 %*	5.27 %*
Education
Less than high school	14.07 %*	16.93 %*
High school	56.77 %*	62.66 %*
College degree or higher	29.16 %*	20.41 %*
Household income ($’000, log transformed)	10.74 (1.34)*	10.49 (1.43)*
Marital status
Married	78.51 %*	68.36 %*
Separated/divorced	16.05 %*	20.61 %*
Widowed	1.33 %*	6.82 %*
Never married	4.10 %	4.13 %
Full time work	75.68 %*	52.01 %*
Job tenure (range 0–42 years)	12.31 (12.16)*	8.03 (9.75)*
Pension	49.38 %*	41.04 %*
Number of chronic health problems (range 0–7)	.99 (1.14)*	1.12 (1.18)*
Reported expectations for later life work
Reported probability ( %) of working full  time at age 62:
1998 (Age 52–56)	54.65 (39.05)*	40.52 (37.64)*
2000 (Age 54–58)	54.97 (37.42)*	45.92 (38.03)*
2002 (Age 56-–60)	56.49 (36.97)*	47.47 (37.75)*
2004 (Age 58–61)	60.34 (38.14)*	52.29 (38.83)*
2006 (Age 60–61)	45.62 (43.40)*	34.43 (38.58)*
Work and psychosocial status in 2008 (Age 62–66)
Full time work	34.97 %*	21.54 %*
Life satisfaction (range 1–7)	5.05 (1.42)	5.03 (1.62)

SD standard deviation

*Denotes statistically significant differences between men and women (p < .001)