The Rhetoric and Reality of Phased Retirement Policies

Abstract

The nature of retirement has changed over time, both in terms of timing and design. Labor force statistics provide strong evidence that the era of early retirement belongs to the past. The one-time, one-way, irreversible transition from full-time employment to complete retirement has gradually disappeared, and the current retirement development may be viewed as a complex process unfolding over time and varying considerably across individuals (Szinovacz, 2013). Judging from official retirement data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in most countries, the twenty-first century is so far a turning point (see Figure 1), and retirement ages are moving swiftly upwards. In the United States, the effective retirement age for men in 2018 was back to the level from 1970 of 68 years, and the retirement ages for U.S. women are also rising and getting close to 67 years of age.