Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Retirement often takes place in the corporate sphere and occurs across the globe.In countries with a statutory retirement age, an individual eventually reaches the age limit to leave the organisation. Many of the older workers are not fully prepared for their retirement in many developing countries. In Malaysia, for lower income groups, they are the most affected particularly in terms of their well-being after facing compulsory retirement. This research intends to identify the set of retirement plans lower rung civil servants have and the proportion of them who have plans to continue working after retirement. The research reached out to 1598 support staff in all three tiers of governments by means of a guided questionnaire survey at the institutions. Results of the study find that more than half of the respondents do not plan to continue work after retirement and they have not planned financially well for life after their retirement. Their level of awareness of retirement benefits is also low. Several reasons influence respondents to continue working after their statutory retirement: to sustain their life after retirement (40%), still able to contribute to the labour force (27%) and like to work (23%). The poor financial literacy among the respondents at the civil service is worrisome as this lacking causes adverse effects on their wellbeing after their statutory retirement.