DEFINITION OF RETIREMENT

While some older adults continue to work full time, others have immediate plans to
leave the paid labor force and enter into retirement. Retirement is a broad concept. At the
level of society, retirement is a social institution with rules about when it is permissible for
workers to leave the paid labor force. At the level of the individual, retirement represents a
transition to a stage of life in which paid employment is no longer required (Erber, 2005).
For people with a steady work history throughout their adult years, the transition to
retirement is usually easy to identify, and such individuals have no difficulty in considering
themselves as retired as soon as they stop working. In todays cohort of older adults, a work
career with few disruptions is more typical for men than it is for women. Many older women
did not participate in the labor force and if they did, they probably experienced periods of
interruption to rear children or to care for elderly parents. Because older womens paid
employment history has been more sporadic than the steady work history of older men,
determining when women are retired is less clear-cut.
With regard to race and ethnic background, it is more common for African American
workers than it is for European American workers to exit the labor force for health reasons,
although some prefer to identify themselves as retired rather than disabled. Once jobs are lost,
it may be difficult to find new employment, especially if there is limited education and few
job qualifications. After a prolonged period of joblessness, many individuals eventually refer
to themselves as retired. Retirement can be ambiguous, particularly for women and
minorities, because the boundary between work and non-work is blurred due to movement in
and out of the labor force.
Considering that retirement is something most people expect to experience in their
lifetimes and that we have all seen people experience it, one would think we must know what
it is. Theory and empirical research give retirement concepts such as bridge employment or
partial retirement, voluntary retirement, and early retirement. Retirement refers to the event
or ceremony marking departure from a career or employment in a particular job, a phase of
the occupational life cycle preparatory to such a departure, a process of separation from
employment, or a social role which is the retiree role. Ekerdt and De Viney (1990) have
outlined several such indicators that have been used by researchers to establish whether

someone is retired among them which they are receiving a pension; total cessation of
employment; departure from the major job or career of adulthood; or a significant reduction
in hours of employment (Morgan and Kunkel, 2007).
The social definition of retirement has changed in the past few decades. For Atchley
retirement is an event that occurs when a person definitely stops working and withdraws from
the formal labor market. Social scientists have pointed out that some people withdraw from
the formal labor market because they lack the health to continue working, or because of agerelated disabilities, or because they have become unemployed and are unable to find a new
job (Hillier and Barrow, 2010). Retirement is quite different than struggling with the inability
to work, and consequently being dependent on family or public welfare for survival. The
retirement seen from perspective of a social institution which it is a persons definitive
economic inactivity, with income from work replaced by income established for support after
employment ends. Retirement is also a stage in the life course, with a set of social rules and
with special social meaning.
For individuals, the meaning of retirement ranges broadly. Researches analyzing data
from a study on the problems and suggestions of retirees (Marcellini et al., 1997)
summarizes:
For some, it is a way of being free from daily routine, making it possible for the
persons to dedicate him- or herself to more satisfying activities linked to personal
interest. For others, instead, it is a difficult period of line in which (they) feel deprived
of a social role, and problems regarding finances, health, and loneliness can arise.
For everyone, though, it is a period of great change in which lifestyle has to be
restructured in many ways. (p. 377)
The outcomes of retirement depends in individual characteristics of people which their
lifestyles and the socio cultural context in which they live. There are many different ways that
older workers could behave at the end of the work life; others paths to retirement include
gradually reducing hours or switching to less demanding jobs, moving to self employment, or
even moving in-and-out of the labor force as health and opportunity permits.