Retirement

Changing Aspects of Retirement

In most countries, retiring at a fixed age was introduced during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—before then, the absence of pension arrangements meant that most workers had to continue to work until they died or were able to rely on the support of family or friends. Today, most developed nations have systems to provide pensions on retirement in old age, which may be provided by employers or the state. In many poorer countries, support for the old is still mainly provided through the family. Germany was the first country to introduce retirement in the 1880s.

The retirement age varies from country to country, but it is generally between fifty-five and seventy. In some countries, this age is different for males and females, as discussed below. Many countries (such as the United States and the United Kingdom) are increasing the standard retirement age from sixty-five to sixty-seven, and in Germany, it is already sixty-seven.

Generally, a retirement with a pension is considered to be a societal right, and to this end, many political, social, and cultural battles have been fought. Retirement can be argued to be a major life event that causes personal upheaval, but it has wider implications for consumer society, with retirees [Page 1220]having more time but less money on which to spend it. Many of the recently retired, however, continue or increase their pursuit of consumption-based identities that were not possible for previous generations of retirees. Early retirees, for example, may be able to enjoy up to twenty years of consumer activity as life expectancy continues to increase in many countries.

People who retired at the end of the twentieth century were arguably able to access a much more extensive material culture than ever before. Up until this time, there was also a “blurring” of the economic transition into postworking lives. This can be seen by the fact that in the United States, the 1968 income of postretirement householders (sixty-five to seventy-four-year-olds) was half that of middle-aged householders (thirty-five to forty-four-year-olds) and just over half (60 percent) of that of young adult householders (twenty-five to thirty-four-year-olds). By 1998, however, their average income increased to two-thirds that of middle-aged householders and 80 percent that of young adults. Leslie Hannah (1986, 126) argues that “the generations retiring in the 1960′s and 1970′s enjoyed a lifetime of continually improving standards in which their retirement was truly a golden age.” Around this time, the phrase gray power and consumer lifestyles into old age began to be analyzed more closely.

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