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Retirement
Retirement P Moen and J Lam, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA r 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Glossary Cycles of control Individuals’ sense of personal mastery over the life course that often changes with unexpected and unwanted role transitions, such as being laid off or having to retire. Encore life stage The bonus years of healthy life expectancy, also called the third age, approximately 50–75 years, after the career and family building years but prior to old age infirmities. Life course The timing, sequence, and duration of roles and relationships over biographic time. Such a standardization revolves around a set of public policies that
Introduction Retirement became a widespread, legitimated status passage in Europe and the United States in the twentieth century with the development of organizational careers and the standardization of the life course, that is, the timing, sequence, and duration of roles and relationships over biographic time. Such a standardization revolves around a set of public policies that guide individuals first into full-time education, then full-time employment, culminating in a retirement transition from paid work and into full-time leisure (Kohli, 2007). Public legislation, along with a host of organizational policies and practices, established retirement as an expected and eagerly anticipated transition, with the age of eligibility for public pensions differing across nations, but typically occurring from approximately ages 60 to 65 years. Note that this traditional retirement model was based on the male career mystique (Moen and Roehling, 2005) of continuous, full-time employment throughout most of adulthood. Though some women retired, it was primarily a male transition, rewarding the male model of continuous employment. Women who moved in and out of the workforce, in and out of part-time work were disadvantaged in retirement and pension schemes which assure income to retirees after they have worked for an employer for a certain number of years (Harrington-Meyer and Herd, 2007). In the 1950s and 1960s, many employing organizations began to offer additional pensions as a recruitment and retention tool, a reward for years of hard work. Thus many workers could afford to retire ‘early,’ and many did so in their 50s. Retirement as full-time leisure supported by welfare and pension systems was assumed to promote mental health, a time of relaxation after years of hard work.
Changing Contexts But a tide of demographic, social, economic, and technological changes has rendered conventional retirement norms and
Encyclopedia of Mental Health, Volume 4
guide individuals first into full-time education, then fulltime employment, culminating in a retirement transition from paid work and into full-time leisure. Retirement project Retirement is no longer a single, irreversible exit at a fixed age, but often unfolds as a series of decisions over time, involving: (1) self-definitions of being ‘retired,’ (2) receiving Social Security benefits or pensions, (3) the complete cessation of paid work, and sometimes, (4) reemployment in an encore career or self-employment, as well as civic engagement. Strategic adaptations Individuals and couples’ responses to role transitions such as retirement.
expectations obsolete. Declining fertility, increasing life expectancy, and the aging of the large Boomer cohort (born in the United States from 1946 to 1964) mean that both populations and workforces are aging (Toossi, 2012). New communication technologies and investment practices have fostered a volatile global economy, with the old social contract (offering security with years of seniority) disappearing, replaced with rising employer flexibility in the ability to dismiss high-cost (including older) employees and seek low-cost labor across the globe (Kalleberg, 2011; Sweet and Meiksins, 2013). The risks embedded in today’s global labor markets are increasingly obvious (Blossfeld et al., 2011; Kalleberg, 2011; Schmid, 2006). Contemporary older workers may find themselves unexpectedly laid off (Moen et al., 2010) or else working under chronic job insecurity (Sweet and Meiksins, 2013; Burgard et al., 2009) with tremendous consequences on their mental health (Gallo et al., 2000). Because women now constitute a significant portion of the labor force and in light of increased life expectancy of aging parents and other relatives, both family care responsibilities and couples’ joint plans are increasingly salient to the timing of retirement, as well as the quality of life of retirees. Concomitant with these changes, the early twenty-first century has witnessed a move away from retirement as an agemandated (through public and organizational policies and age norms) exit from continuous full-time employment to continuous full-time leisure, and away from the mid-twentiethcentury trend toward progressively earlier retirement (Gendell, 2008). Simultaneously, social observers point to an emerging ‘third age’ or ‘encore’ life stage from approximately age 50 to 75 years, a period after the first age of childhood and the second age of career and family building, but prior to the fourth age of infirmities associated with old age (Laslett, 1989; Weiss and Bass, 2002; Moen and Flood, 2013). The contemporary twenty-first-century retirement status passage is no longer necessarily a one-way, one-time irreversible event. Rather this transition increasingly occurs over a period of time during these encore years, suggesting it is a
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project rather than a single exit, with bridge jobs (scaling back from full time to part time on the way to retirement), reemployment, and encore careers of paid and unpaid civic engagement often part of the project (Shultz, 2003). The project is contingent on the resources individuals and their families have as well as their physical health (Moen and Flood, 2013; Warner et al., 2010).
Retirement as an Encore Project These transformations in both the nature of the retirement status passage and the nature of the later life course are occurring together with the movement of the large Boomer cohort (born in the years 1946–64 in the United States) into this emerging encore life stage. And yet most research on retirement and mental health during this transition is about earlier cohorts living in earlier times, when the circumstances and expectations around retirement and longevity were vastly different. What is key is that much of what is known about mental health in relation to retirement may be out of date, no longer applicable or relevant to Boomers now approaching or moving through the traditional retirement years. For example, there is no longer any consensus as to the definition or measurement of ‘retirement.’ Viewing the retirement transition as a project underscores the dilemmas and decisions about the timing of exits and changes in both public engagement and the temporal rhythms of daily life. Such a project may involve, over a period of years and in various order, (1) self-definitions of being ‘retired,’ (2) receiving Social Security benefits or pensions, or (3) the complete cessation of paid work. It can also include (4) reemployment in an encore career or self-employment, as well as civic engagement in the form of volunteer work (Freedman, 2011; Kaskie et al., 2008). The variability in age of retirement exits suggests that contemporary older workers (Boomers) have some degree of choice over the nature and timing of this status passage. But the potential opportunities for customizing this phase of the life course are not equally distributed, as economic upheavals have upended job and retirement security and the aging of the population has raised issues around traditional safety nets (such as Social Security and Medicare), even as many privatesector retirement policies have been dismantled or weakened (Moen, 2012). Some find themselves ‘retired’ through forced buy outs and layoffs, along with age discrimination preventing their reemployment (Sweet and Meiksins, 2013; Sweet et al., 2007). Others find they can’t afford to leave their (often demanding) full-time career jobs. Still others who are retired seek out civic engagement and volunteering opportunities in order to stay engaged, with benefits to their psychological well-being (Ho and Raymo, 2009; Li and Ferraro, 2005; Morrow-Howell et al., 2003). Is retirement good or bad for mental health? The answer must be, ‘it depends.’ To be sure, a 2011 national survey by Metlife of the oldest Boomers in the United States (those born in 1946, turning 65 years in 2011) found that 70% of retirees report liking retirement ‘a lot’ whereas another 20% say they ‘like it somewhat.’ But there are wide variations in life satisfaction and distress among those in the encore years.
An Institutional, Life Course, and Stress Process Lens There is no one theoretical approach that best explains the mental health effects of retirement. Rather, combining strands of institutional, life course, and stress process theories underscores the dynamics and contexts associated with what has become a constrained choice as to whether and when to exit the workforce, seek an encore job, or volunteer (Moen, 2012). Taken together, these theories provide a framework for understanding the contexts and dynamics of the retirement transition in contemporary times, and their implications for mental health. The encore project and concomitant allocations of time consist of choices by individuals and couples that are embedded in features of the institutional and economic environments shaping those choices; along with social structures influencing prior as well as current transitions, trajectories, and resource streams, even as retirement norms and the structures sustaining them are unraveling (Figure 1). Thus, degrees of choice and control are institutionalized within the social organization, and power distribution in roles and relationships. An example of the constrained choices and new heterogeneity around retirement uses data from the Health and Retirement Study, a large national study of persons 50 years of age and older born before 1947 (mostly pre-Boomers). This study shows a large number of men and women retire both ‘early’ and ‘late’: more than three-quarters of men’s retirement are ‘off time,’ with 35% retiring before age 62 years and 41% retiring after 65 years. Moreover, 79% of women also retire ‘off time,’ though with a larger percentage retiring early (45%), than late (34%) (Warner et al., 2010). The evidence to date suggests that what matters for psychological health is not so much retirement timing but whether or not the exit is voluntary or involuntary and whether it conforms to prior expectations. For example, Clark et al. (2012) found that when US men with a history of job instability had high expectations about working past age 62 years but were unable to do so, they had lower life satisfaction. Research suggests that the mental well-being in retirement is often contingent on prior work and family trajectories (the path people took before they retired), how long they have been retired and their spouses’ retirement status, as well as the voluntariness of this exit (Hershey and Henkens, 2013; Jokela et al., 2010). For instance, a worker who puts in long hours at her job before retiring is likely to report experiencing greater decline in stress than someone who worked part time before retirement. The life course concept of cycles of control (Elder, 1985; Hitlin and Elder, 2007), combined with the stress process model (Pearlin, 2010; Pearlin et al., 1981) points to how particular life events, including retirement, may be a stressor or may reduce the stress of a demanding or disliked job, as well as the mental health implications of this being a voluntary or involuntary transition. Viewing one’s retirement as voluntary is likely to elevate one’s sense of control, whereas experiencing an involuntary transition may result in a reduced sense of control. Thus, changes at work or in home life may create cycles of more or less control over time. This approach also emphasizes strategic adaptations by individuals and couples as ways of regaining a sense of control over one’s life following an unexpected (or even expected) transition in the encore years. Some groups are more vulnerable
Retirement
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Institutionalized schema, and patterns of living
Cohorts in contemporary context: organizations, work, retirement, and family Stressors:
Institutions as laws, policies, and regulations
Structures: Layoffs, mergers Reemployment discrimination Encore options Retirement packages, and policies
Mental health
Income insecurity Job/care demands Job exits Uncertainty about future
Global climate, and unstable economic contexts
Resources: Supportive spouse, network Sense of control Health, education, income, assets
Institutionalized age-, gender-, and status- graded resources
Figure 1 Constrained choices around retirement shape mental health in the encore years (50–75).
to deleterious effects, having fewer material (such as income) or psychosocial resources (such as good emotional health) to facilitate successful adaptive strategies. For instance, researchers find that recently retired men who have a wife who is still working report higher depressive symptoms (Kim and Moen, 2002; Moen et al., 2001; Szinovacz and Davey, 2004). This suggests that this nontraditional situation, when the wife is working and the husband is not, is difficult for men, and may reflect changes in the power dynamics within couples. In addition, employment status (or being retired) may require a renegotiation of housework, underscoring the salience of spouses’ agreement on retirement decisions, as well as the role of planning in helping to realize retirement expectations (Ho and Raymo, 2009). Szinovacz and Davey (2004) suggest that the effect of wives’ employment on retired men’s well-being seems to persist over time, though it becomes weaker for men who have been retired longer, suggesting the importance of future research on trajectories of well-being. But both of these studies were on cohorts preceding the Boomers. Will Boomers have these same experiences? In addition to retirement status, prior job characteristics may also determine how retirees fare in the encore years. Kubicek et al. (2011) report (on data from a pre-Boomer cohort) that men with higher job satisfaction before retirement have lower positive psychological functioning after retirement, suggesting that those who enjoyed their jobs may reap fewer benefits from retiring from them. For women, viewing one’s work as important is associated with greater depressive
symptoms on retirement. Preretirement resources are key, as individuals may gain or lose resources (social support, esteem, etc.) on retirement, with such gains and losses linked to mental health outcomes. Research shows that higher status jobs are related to better mental function after retirement (Mein et al., 2003) and that having worked in poor work environments is also associated with improved self-rated health after retirement (Westerlund et al., 2009). This suggests that mental health impacts vary depending on the jobs people retire from. Note that these two studies draw on data from two different employment settings in two different countries (France and the UK) and include men and women from both boomer and pre-boomer cohorts. Mein et al. (2003) defined retirement as whether respondents (all civil servants) were still actually working after the mandatory retirement age of 60 in one of 20 London civil service departments. In contrast, Westerlund et al. (2009) defined retirement as the occurrence of one of three events: receipt of an official retirement pension (statutory retirement), longstanding illness or disability, or more than 650 days of sickness absence in 2 consecutive years.
Conclusion As the transition to adulthood is increasingly postponed and life expectancy increased, individuals in their 50s and 60s find themselves in the middle rather than the end of the contemporary adult course, in an emerging encore life stage.
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Population aging and growing life expectancies together with a turbulent global economy and heightened job insecurity require a reexamination of the career course, including the retirement transition and the possibility of encores, as well as the mental health implications of alternative exit pathways. Older workers and retirees are benefiting from the bonus encore years of the life course that come in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, and some research suggests that voluntary work or voluntary retirement during these years contribute to psychological wellbeing. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the convergence of these dislocations, with social forces reshaping the human experience of those in the encore years of adulthood, the roughly 25 years between the life stages of building families/careers and the frailties of old age. At the same time, individuals at this stage in life may be very different from one another, in terms of their health and mental well-being, given prior work and family experiences (Moen and Spencer, 2006). Clearly, the later life career course, especially as pertains to Boomers, is an important arena for future research and policy development.
See also: Caregiving. Mental Health and Aging. Social Support and Mental Health
References Blossfeld, H.P., Buchholz, S., Kurz, K., 2011. Aging Populations, Globalization and the Labor Market: Comparing Late Working Life and Retirement in Modern Societies. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Press. Burgard, S.A., Brand, J.E., House, J.S., 2009. Perceived job insecurity and worker health in the United States. Social Science & Medicine 69, 777–785. Clark, P., Marshall, V.W., Weir, D., 2012. Unexpected retirement from full time work after age 62: Consequences for life satisfaction in older Americans. European Journal of Aging 9 (3), 207–219. Elder, G.H. (Ed.), 1985. Life Course Dynamics: Trajectories and Transitions, 1968− 1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Freedman, M., 2011. The Big Shift. New York, NY: Public Affairs, Perseus Books Group. Gallo, W.T., Bradley, E.H., Siegel, M., Kasl, S.V., 2000. Health effects of involuntary job loss among older workers: Findings from the health and retirement survey. Journal of Gerontology 55B, S131–S140. Gendell, M., 2008. Older workers: Increasing their labor force participation and hours of work. Monthly Labor Review January, 41–54. Harrington-Meyer, M., Herd, P., 2007. Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age. New York, NY: Russell Sage. Hershey, D.A., Henkens, K., 2013. Impact of different types of retirement transitions on perceived satisfaction with life. Gerontologist. doi:10.1093/geront/gnt006. Hitlin, S., Elder Jr., G.H., 2007. Agency: An empirical model of an abstract concept. Advances in Life Course Research 11, 33–68. Ho, J., Raymo, J.M., 2009. Expectations and realization of joint retirement among dual-worker couples. Research on Aging 31 (2), 153–179. Jokela, M., Ferrie, J.E., Gimeno, D., et al., 2010. From midlife to early old age: Health trajectories associated with retirement. Epidemiology 21 (3), 284–290. Kalleberg, A.L., 2011. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s. New York, NY: Sage Press.
Kaskie, B., Imhof, S., Cavanaugh, J., Culp, K., 2008. Civic engagement as a retirement role for aging Americans. Gerontologist 48, 368–377. Kim, J., Moen, P., 2002. Retirement transitions, gender, and psychological wellbeing: A life-course, ecological model. Journal of Gerontology 57B, P212–P222. Kohli, M., 2007. The institutionalization of the life course: Looking back to look ahead. Research in Human Development 4, 253–271. Kubicek, B., Korunka, C., Raymo, J., Hoonakker, P., 2011. Psychological well-being in retirement: The effects of personal and gendered contextual resources. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 16 (2), 230–246. Laslett, P., 1989. A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Li, Y., Ferraro, K.F., 2005. Volunteering and depression in later life: Social benefit or selection processes? Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, 68–84. Mein, G., Martikainen, P., Hemingway, H., Stansfeld, S., Marmot, M., 2003. Is retirement good or bad for mental and physical health functioning? Whitehall II longitudinal study of civil servants. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57, 46–49. Moen, P., 2012. Constrained choices: The shifting institutional contexts of aging and the life course. In: Waite, L. (Ed.), Panel on new directions in social demography, social epidemiology, and the sociology of aging. Perspectives on the Future of the Sociology of Aging. Washington, DC: National Research Council, pp. 81–119. Moen, P., Flood, S., 2013. Limited engagements? Women’s and men’s work/ volunteer time in the encore life course stage. Social Problems 60 (2), 206–233. Moen, P., Kim, J.E., Hofmeister, H., 2001. Couples’ work/retirement transitions, gender, and marital quality. Social Psychology Quarterly 64, 55–71. Moen, P., Roehling, P., 2005. The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Moen, P., Spencer, D., 2006. Converging divergences in age, gender, health, and well-being: Strategic selection in the third age. In: Binstock, R., George, L. (Eds.), Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences. Burlington: Elsevier Academic Press, pp. 127–144. Moen, P., Sweet, S., Hill, R., 2010. Risk, resilience, and life-course fit: Older couples’ encores following job loss. In: Fry, P.S., Keyes, C.L.M. (Eds.), New Frontiers in Resilient Aging. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 283–309. Morrow-Howell, N., Hinterlong, J., Rozario, P.A., Tang, F., 2003. Effects of volunteering on the well-being of older adults. Journal of Gerontology Psychological Sciences 58 (3), S137–S145. Pearlin, L., 2010. The life course and the stress process: Some conceptual comparisons. Journal of Gerontology 65B, 207–215. Pearlin, L.I., Lieberman, M., Menaghan, E., Mullan, J.T., 1981. The stress process. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 22, 237–256. Schmid, G., 2006. Social risk management through transitional labour markets. Socio-Economic Review 4, 1–33. Shultz, K.S., 2003. Bridge employment: Work after retirement. In: Adams, G.A., Beehr, T.A. (Eds.), Retirement: Reasons, Processes and Results. New York: Springer Publishing Company, pp. 214–241 (Chapter 9). Sweet, S., Meiksins, P., 2013. Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, second ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Sweet, S., Moen, P., Meiksins, P., 2007. Dual earners in double jeopardy: Preparing for job loss in the new risk economy. Research in the Sociology of Work 17, 437–464. Szinovacz, M.E., Davey, A., 2004. Honeymoons and joint lunches: Effects of retirement and spouse’s employment on depressive symptoms. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 59B, P233–P245. Toossi, M., 2012. Projections of the labor force to 2050: A visual essay. Monthly Labor Review October, 3–16. Warner, D.F., Hayward, M.D., Hardy, M.A., 2010. The retirement life course in America at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Population Research and Policy Review 29 (6), 893–919. Weiss, R.S., Bass, S. (Eds.), 2002. Challenges of the Third Age: Meaning and Purpose in Later Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Westerlund, H., Kivimaki, M., Singh-Manoux, A., et al., 2009. Self-rated health before and after retirement in France (GAZEL): A cohort study. Lancet 374, 1889–1896.
Glossary Cycles of control Individuals’ sense of personal mastery over the life course that often changes with unexpected and unwanted role transitions, such as being laid off or having to retire. Encore life stage The bonus years of healthy life expectancy, also called the third age, approximately 50–75 years, after the career and family building years but prior to old age infirmities. Life course The timing, sequence, and duration of roles and relationships over biographic time. Such a standardization revolves around a set of public policies that
Introduction Retirement became a widespread, legitimated status passage in Europe and the United States in the twentieth century with the development of organizational careers and the standardization of the life course, that is, the timing, sequence, and duration of roles and relationships over biographic time. Such a standardization revolves around a set of public policies that guide individuals first into full-time education, then full-time employment, culminating in a retirement transition from paid work and into full-time leisure (Kohli, 2007). Public legislation, along with a host of organizational policies and practices, established retirement as an expected and eagerly anticipated transition, with the age of eligibility for public pensions differing across nations, but typically occurring from approximately ages 60 to 65 years. Note that this traditional retirement model was based on the male career mystique (Moen and Roehling, 2005) of continuous, full-time employment throughout most of adulthood. Though some women retired, it was primarily a male transition, rewarding the male model of continuous employment. Women who moved in and out of the workforce, in and out of part-time work were disadvantaged in retirement and pension schemes which assure income to retirees after they have worked for an employer for a certain number of years (Harrington-Meyer and Herd, 2007). In the 1950s and 1960s, many employing organizations began to offer additional pensions as a recruitment and retention tool, a reward for years of hard work. Thus many workers could afford to retire ‘early,’ and many did so in their 50s. Retirement as full-time leisure supported by welfare and pension systems was assumed to promote mental health, a time of relaxation after years of hard work.
Changing Contexts But a tide of demographic, social, economic, and technological changes has rendered conventional retirement norms and
Encyclopedia of Mental Health, Volume 4
guide individuals first into full-time education, then fulltime employment, culminating in a retirement transition from paid work and into full-time leisure. Retirement project Retirement is no longer a single, irreversible exit at a fixed age, but often unfolds as a series of decisions over time, involving: (1) self-definitions of being ‘retired,’ (2) receiving Social Security benefits or pensions, (3) the complete cessation of paid work, and sometimes, (4) reemployment in an encore career or self-employment, as well as civic engagement. Strategic adaptations Individuals and couples’ responses to role transitions such as retirement.
expectations obsolete. Declining fertility, increasing life expectancy, and the aging of the large Boomer cohort (born in the United States from 1946 to 1964) mean that both populations and workforces are aging (Toossi, 2012). New communication technologies and investment practices have fostered a volatile global economy, with the old social contract (offering security with years of seniority) disappearing, replaced with rising employer flexibility in the ability to dismiss high-cost (including older) employees and seek low-cost labor across the globe (Kalleberg, 2011; Sweet and Meiksins, 2013). The risks embedded in today’s global labor markets are increasingly obvious (Blossfeld et al., 2011; Kalleberg, 2011; Schmid, 2006). Contemporary older workers may find themselves unexpectedly laid off (Moen et al., 2010) or else working under chronic job insecurity (Sweet and Meiksins, 2013; Burgard et al., 2009) with tremendous consequences on their mental health (Gallo et al., 2000). Because women now constitute a significant portion of the labor force and in light of increased life expectancy of aging parents and other relatives, both family care responsibilities and couples’ joint plans are increasingly salient to the timing of retirement, as well as the quality of life of retirees. Concomitant with these changes, the early twenty-first century has witnessed a move away from retirement as an agemandated (through public and organizational policies and age norms) exit from continuous full-time employment to continuous full-time leisure, and away from the mid-twentiethcentury trend toward progressively earlier retirement (Gendell, 2008). Simultaneously, social observers point to an emerging ‘third age’ or ‘encore’ life stage from approximately age 50 to 75 years, a period after the first age of childhood and the second age of career and family building, but prior to the fourth age of infirmities associated with old age (Laslett, 1989; Weiss and Bass, 2002; Moen and Flood, 2013). The contemporary twenty-first-century retirement status passage is no longer necessarily a one-way, one-time irreversible event. Rather this transition increasingly occurs over a period of time during these encore years, suggesting it is a
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Retirement
project rather than a single exit, with bridge jobs (scaling back from full time to part time on the way to retirement), reemployment, and encore careers of paid and unpaid civic engagement often part of the project (Shultz, 2003). The project is contingent on the resources individuals and their families have as well as their physical health (Moen and Flood, 2013; Warner et al., 2010).
Retirement as an Encore Project These transformations in both the nature of the retirement status passage and the nature of the later life course are occurring together with the movement of the large Boomer cohort (born in the years 1946–64 in the United States) into this emerging encore life stage. And yet most research on retirement and mental health during this transition is about earlier cohorts living in earlier times, when the circumstances and expectations around retirement and longevity were vastly different. What is key is that much of what is known about mental health in relation to retirement may be out of date, no longer applicable or relevant to Boomers now approaching or moving through the traditional retirement years. For example, there is no longer any consensus as to the definition or measurement of ‘retirement.’ Viewing the retirement transition as a project underscores the dilemmas and decisions about the timing of exits and changes in both public engagement and the temporal rhythms of daily life. Such a project may involve, over a period of years and in various order, (1) self-definitions of being ‘retired,’ (2) receiving Social Security benefits or pensions, or (3) the complete cessation of paid work. It can also include (4) reemployment in an encore career or self-employment, as well as civic engagement in the form of volunteer work (Freedman, 2011; Kaskie et al., 2008). The variability in age of retirement exits suggests that contemporary older workers (Boomers) have some degree of choice over the nature and timing of this status passage. But the potential opportunities for customizing this phase of the life course are not equally distributed, as economic upheavals have upended job and retirement security and the aging of the population has raised issues around traditional safety nets (such as Social Security and Medicare), even as many privatesector retirement policies have been dismantled or weakened (Moen, 2012). Some find themselves ‘retired’ through forced buy outs and layoffs, along with age discrimination preventing their reemployment (Sweet and Meiksins, 2013; Sweet et al., 2007). Others find they can’t afford to leave their (often demanding) full-time career jobs. Still others who are retired seek out civic engagement and volunteering opportunities in order to stay engaged, with benefits to their psychological well-being (Ho and Raymo, 2009; Li and Ferraro, 2005; Morrow-Howell et al., 2003). Is retirement good or bad for mental health? The answer must be, ‘it depends.’ To be sure, a 2011 national survey by Metlife of the oldest Boomers in the United States (those born in 1946, turning 65 years in 2011) found that 70% of retirees report liking retirement ‘a lot’ whereas another 20% say they ‘like it somewhat.’ But there are wide variations in life satisfaction and distress among those in the encore years.
An Institutional, Life Course, and Stress Process Lens There is no one theoretical approach that best explains the mental health effects of retirement. Rather, combining strands of institutional, life course, and stress process theories underscores the dynamics and contexts associated with what has become a constrained choice as to whether and when to exit the workforce, seek an encore job, or volunteer (Moen, 2012). Taken together, these theories provide a framework for understanding the contexts and dynamics of the retirement transition in contemporary times, and their implications for mental health. The encore project and concomitant allocations of time consist of choices by individuals and couples that are embedded in features of the institutional and economic environments shaping those choices; along with social structures influencing prior as well as current transitions, trajectories, and resource streams, even as retirement norms and the structures sustaining them are unraveling (Figure 1). Thus, degrees of choice and control are institutionalized within the social organization, and power distribution in roles and relationships. An example of the constrained choices and new heterogeneity around retirement uses data from the Health and Retirement Study, a large national study of persons 50 years of age and older born before 1947 (mostly pre-Boomers). This study shows a large number of men and women retire both ‘early’ and ‘late’: more than three-quarters of men’s retirement are ‘off time,’ with 35% retiring before age 62 years and 41% retiring after 65 years. Moreover, 79% of women also retire ‘off time,’ though with a larger percentage retiring early (45%), than late (34%) (Warner et al., 2010). The evidence to date suggests that what matters for psychological health is not so much retirement timing but whether or not the exit is voluntary or involuntary and whether it conforms to prior expectations. For example, Clark et al. (2012) found that when US men with a history of job instability had high expectations about working past age 62 years but were unable to do so, they had lower life satisfaction. Research suggests that the mental well-being in retirement is often contingent on prior work and family trajectories (the path people took before they retired), how long they have been retired and their spouses’ retirement status, as well as the voluntariness of this exit (Hershey and Henkens, 2013; Jokela et al., 2010). For instance, a worker who puts in long hours at her job before retiring is likely to report experiencing greater decline in stress than someone who worked part time before retirement. The life course concept of cycles of control (Elder, 1985; Hitlin and Elder, 2007), combined with the stress process model (Pearlin, 2010; Pearlin et al., 1981) points to how particular life events, including retirement, may be a stressor or may reduce the stress of a demanding or disliked job, as well as the mental health implications of this being a voluntary or involuntary transition. Viewing one’s retirement as voluntary is likely to elevate one’s sense of control, whereas experiencing an involuntary transition may result in a reduced sense of control. Thus, changes at work or in home life may create cycles of more or less control over time. This approach also emphasizes strategic adaptations by individuals and couples as ways of regaining a sense of control over one’s life following an unexpected (or even expected) transition in the encore years. Some groups are more vulnerable
Retirement
49
Institutionalized schema, and patterns of living
Cohorts in contemporary context: organizations, work, retirement, and family Stressors:
Institutions as laws, policies, and regulations
Structures: Layoffs, mergers Reemployment discrimination Encore options Retirement packages, and policies
Mental health
Income insecurity Job/care demands Job exits Uncertainty about future
Global climate, and unstable economic contexts
Resources: Supportive spouse, network Sense of control Health, education, income, assets
Institutionalized age-, gender-, and status- graded resources
Figure 1 Constrained choices around retirement shape mental health in the encore years (50–75).
to deleterious effects, having fewer material (such as income) or psychosocial resources (such as good emotional health) to facilitate successful adaptive strategies. For instance, researchers find that recently retired men who have a wife who is still working report higher depressive symptoms (Kim and Moen, 2002; Moen et al., 2001; Szinovacz and Davey, 2004). This suggests that this nontraditional situation, when the wife is working and the husband is not, is difficult for men, and may reflect changes in the power dynamics within couples. In addition, employment status (or being retired) may require a renegotiation of housework, underscoring the salience of spouses’ agreement on retirement decisions, as well as the role of planning in helping to realize retirement expectations (Ho and Raymo, 2009). Szinovacz and Davey (2004) suggest that the effect of wives’ employment on retired men’s well-being seems to persist over time, though it becomes weaker for men who have been retired longer, suggesting the importance of future research on trajectories of well-being. But both of these studies were on cohorts preceding the Boomers. Will Boomers have these same experiences? In addition to retirement status, prior job characteristics may also determine how retirees fare in the encore years. Kubicek et al. (2011) report (on data from a pre-Boomer cohort) that men with higher job satisfaction before retirement have lower positive psychological functioning after retirement, suggesting that those who enjoyed their jobs may reap fewer benefits from retiring from them. For women, viewing one’s work as important is associated with greater depressive
symptoms on retirement. Preretirement resources are key, as individuals may gain or lose resources (social support, esteem, etc.) on retirement, with such gains and losses linked to mental health outcomes. Research shows that higher status jobs are related to better mental function after retirement (Mein et al., 2003) and that having worked in poor work environments is also associated with improved self-rated health after retirement (Westerlund et al., 2009). This suggests that mental health impacts vary depending on the jobs people retire from. Note that these two studies draw on data from two different employment settings in two different countries (France and the UK) and include men and women from both boomer and pre-boomer cohorts. Mein et al. (2003) defined retirement as whether respondents (all civil servants) were still actually working after the mandatory retirement age of 60 in one of 20 London civil service departments. In contrast, Westerlund et al. (2009) defined retirement as the occurrence of one of three events: receipt of an official retirement pension (statutory retirement), longstanding illness or disability, or more than 650 days of sickness absence in 2 consecutive years.
Conclusion As the transition to adulthood is increasingly postponed and life expectancy increased, individuals in their 50s and 60s find themselves in the middle rather than the end of the contemporary adult course, in an emerging encore life stage.
50
Retirement
Population aging and growing life expectancies together with a turbulent global economy and heightened job insecurity require a reexamination of the career course, including the retirement transition and the possibility of encores, as well as the mental health implications of alternative exit pathways. Older workers and retirees are benefiting from the bonus encore years of the life course that come in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, and some research suggests that voluntary work or voluntary retirement during these years contribute to psychological wellbeing. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the convergence of these dislocations, with social forces reshaping the human experience of those in the encore years of adulthood, the roughly 25 years between the life stages of building families/careers and the frailties of old age. At the same time, individuals at this stage in life may be very different from one another, in terms of their health and mental well-being, given prior work and family experiences (Moen and Spencer, 2006). Clearly, the later life career course, especially as pertains to Boomers, is an important arena for future research and policy development.
See also: Caregiving. Mental Health and Aging. Social Support and Mental Health
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