The Transformation of Retirement in Twentieth-Century America: From Discontent to Satisfaction.

Abstract

Why continues to evolve. The latter part of the twentieth century may well be remembered as the era of since it was during the final few decades that this stage became an expected and usually welcome part of the life course. But in this new century of economic transformation, not only are occupational and industrial structures being reshaped, but the marginal economic categories of nonemployment are also being redefined. These categories of nonemployment - student, homemaker, caregiver, disabled worker, and retiree- are characterized by such increasing diversity and overlap that classification of individuals in one and only one category is no longer the norm. Although the focus of this article is the evolution of retirement, we cannot consider the status of in isolation. Rather, we must judge it by its relationship to other categories of nonemployment activity and to labor force participation. The story of in the twentieth century is largely a story about men. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, from the labor force also became an increasingly important transition for women. The increase in two-earner households, the ongoing dismantling of employment barriers for women and minorities, and the growing democratization of the workplace resulted in a democratization of transitions such as retirement. But even as late as the 1970s, most older married women did not find retirement a concept relevant to their lives (Sherman, 1974). Of course, single women and women of color have historically had a greater attachment to the labor force. Nevertheless, retirement- as a status, a transition, a role, an identity, or a bureaucratic classification-has, until recently, developed relative to the experiences of men. To say that has evolved is also to locate our historical analysis within a concrete frame of time and space. This discussion will address the growth and change in largely during the past 100 years, as it occurred in the United States. Although there are many commonalities in this process between the United States and other industrialized nations, cultural context does matter in understanding what has changed. Evolution implies some set of contingencies that influence how and where a new role is socially selected, what defines the adaptation process that ensues, and whether what was initially a single role later subdivides into multiple, more specialized roles. RETIREMENT AS NONEMPLOYMENT Attachment to the labor force distinguishes those in the labor force-the employed, those with a job but not at work, the unemployed (those without a job but actively seeking one) -- from those out of the labor force, which includes students, homemakers and caregivers, disabled workers, and retirees. In the twentieth century, this latter set of categories coincided with specific demographic groups: students were generally young; homemakers were women; the disabled were middle-aged former workers with severe impairments; the retirees were old. The organization of the life course provided a normative sequence for these roles. Most women began as students, became homemakers, and then became widows - a pattern later amended to include employment before marriage and in later life. Most men began as students, became workers, and then became retirees. They spent the bulk of their lives as workers, often beginning in their early teen years and continuing until death or a few years before death. In the first half of the century, demographers tried to quantify the number of years a man could expect to work in his lifetime. Whether as an attempt to assign a monetary value to a man (Dublin and Lotka, 1946) or as a response to the problems of dependency in old age, estimating the life span of current and future workers received renewed attention in the post-World War II era. The length of working life was directly linked to poverty in old age, since for the average worker, the end of gainful employment spelled an end to financial independence. …

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