Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Retirement has traditionally been defined as an age-related and permanent transition from an income status based on employment to one based on transfers and assets at the end of the work career. The relationship of retirement to age has been defined more by state and market institutions that have provided age-based incentives to exit the labor force than by the physical aging process itself. These institutions developed since the late nineteenth century to replace income from earnings with pensions and to support access to health care systems through public and private insurance systems, although they vary across countries in their eligibility criteria and share of public funding support. However, all countries now confront major fiscal challenges associated with population aging, economic restructuring at a global level, and changing family and household arrangements that are motivating the reorganization of income- and health-support policies. As such, the institution of retirement is changing. The major demographic trend over the twentieth century associated with these institutions in the US was the decline in labor force participation of the elderly, and especially of elderly men ( Costa 1998 ). Early in the twentieth century, ill health and unemployment were factors in this decline. However, the spread of pensions across the public and private sectors contributed increasingly ... log in or subscribe to read full text