Retirement

I

Introduction

Retirement, the point in life at which employees cease to engage in paid work and qualify for a pension. It marks an age boundary specified in the social welfare policy of industrialized societies, and is an idea that was formulated around the turn of the 20th century. However, the social and economic implications of ageing and provision for life beyond wage-labour employment received little attention from sociologists and psychologists until the 1960s.

Men generally retire at 65 in Britain, Germany, and Australia (with equal rights to earlier retirement for certain professions in Germany). In Britain, women qualify for a retirement pension after their 60th birthday, as in Australia where, however, there is a commitment to raise women’s pension age to 65 by 2013.

II

History

It is sometimes suggested that pre-industrial society venerated the aged because they were repositories of wisdom, but realities present a more complicated picture. There has always existed a dynamic relationship between the position of older members of a social group and its capacity to provide for itself. People living at precarious survival levels abandoned their aged to asylums or workhouses during shortages, just as unwanted infants were left to die unless they were found and cared for by others.

Only technologically advanced societies have funded formal retirement. Societies producing little beyond their immediate needs have relied upon the work of older labourers, as in many Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Serbian villages of the early 20th century. In agrarian territories, where land apportionments were vested in the aged, peasants with substantial holdings dominated life patterns of younger people and subordinate households, with perhaps two to three generations living on kin-group plots. Formal retirement was not an issue in such networks collaborating in peasant farming and crafts. However, where less closed, urbanizing societies mastered technological transformation and produced goods for impersonal sale to distant others, labour surpluses were experienced in fluctuating supply-and-demand cycles. Older workers (artisans, mechanics, jobbers, and journeymen) were marginalized as societies became industrialized with the need for specialized skills.

Before the implementation of state pensions in early 20th-century Britain, labourers did not retire if they could avoid it. Fear of starvation or the workhouse compelled those with declining health to turn to low-paid and unskilled work. Germany instituted old-age insurance in 1889; Australia introduced the Age Pension in 1909; Britain legislated similarly in 1925. Thus, formal retirement is relatively recent, especially among poorer classes.

Changing work practices have been influential: around 73 per cent of the British male population over 65 was occupied in wage labour in 1881; by 1981 this had reduced to 11 per cent of a much larger population. Furthermore, compulsory retirement from work had become a wider trend over this period.

III

Problems of Retirement

Nowadays, social workers and care agencies draw attention to problems concerning financial hardship, unused skills, and dented self-image concomitant with statutory termination of work. Most analysts do not follow popular opinion by attributing retirement legislation to social philanthropy alone, or successful campaigns that relieve people from the need to work in their old age. Retirement is judged by some to be a well-earned right to rest, a deserved period of peace, but others perceive mandatory retirement as enforced unemployment in an economy dominated by short-term planning, job insecurity, overemphasis on youth, particularly in the commercialization of youthful appearance, and engagement of low-cost employees.

Worldwide, problems of retirement are linked to an increase in life expectancy. With growing average lifespans in economically advanced countries, retirement is often regarded as an adjunct to workforce policy. Older people may view themselves as undervalued reserves of labour, perhaps called upon during times of need but otherwise seen as a drain on financial resources of the active workforce that, in recent years, has itself been declining in numbers.

Retirement involves not only the loss of the most significant activity in which people have engaged but also a drop in income; increased leisure time with possibly declining health; shrinking networks of contact; and possible loss of self-esteem. Many writers ask whether welfare institutions are capable of helping retired people face complex adaptations and changed roles.

Retired people face the challenge of establishing a structure and purpose to time that must now be occupied without substantial expenditure (even with additional pension schemes). They also have to face ageism—prejudice against older people—in many situations. Citizens who through retirement have lost their main function for others tend to lose their sense of personal worth and sometimes their physical and mental health.

Certain small benefits exist, however, for retired people in some countries, such as free travel and reduced admission rates. Affluent, healthy retired people are seen as a growing sector of society that is able to enjoy increased leisure time and activities. They also constitute a growing market, particularly in the United States.