This article addresses retirement as a stage of life as well as the long-term processes through which people anticipate, enter, and adapt to that stage. The word ‘‘retirement’’ derives from the French retirer (to withdraw), and although retirement is a withdrawal from paid employment, what it is progress toward or into is not always well defined.
Workers through the ages have sought relief from labor and responsibility toward the end of their lives. Western literature?s most famous retiree, King Lear, using the royal ??we,?? set Shakespeare?s (1606) play in motion with this opening speech: Know that we have divided In three our kingdom. And ?tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger streng…
With a retirement stage solidly lodged on the mental map of life, there is a gathering, informal involvement in the topic that begins years prior to the event. In thinking about their retirement timing and lifestyle, current workers can now draw on the experience of a generation of older role models who have already retired in an era of reasonable income security. Thoughts of retirement have many …
Retirement was once assumed to be a one-way exit from a one-job work career of some twenty-five or thirty years? duration upon eligibility for pension or Social Security benefits. Closer study of work and retirement patterns in the 1980s and 1990s revealed the growing variety of paths and job sequences by which workers can retire. One can stop altogether, or switch to part-time work, or start a ne…
Once retired, whatever form retirement may take, the majority of people say that they are satisfied with their decision, and many say that they should have retired sooner. These sentiments are shared by men and women alike, as shown by responses to a national survey of U.S. retirees aged sixty-two to sixty-five (Table 1). A good experience with retirement is more likely among people in good health…
The retirement stage that workers anticipate, enter, and occupy is widely available only because of larger political and economic arrangements that created pension supports for retirement. These supports developed across the twentieth century in order to manage the size and composition of the labor force. As a creation of institutional policy, the evolving practice of retirement continues to be a …
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