However, demographers and historians have taught us that there is no direct causal relationship between simplistic “hydraulic pressure” models of population growth and the development of forms of social institutions or the emergence of moral-conceptual categories.
The demographic forces of decreased mortality, better health care systems, and increased longevity have contributed to larger numbers of elderly than ever before in our history. The institution of retirement appears to be a product of the confluence of developing industrialization, surplus capital, and Protestant ideology. Historians such as William Graebner (1980) and Jill Quadagno (1982) show that, in its current institutional form marked by state supported pensions, it is a relatively recent practice. But, historically and cross culturally, the practice of retirement may be anything but common. Retirement is a familiar part of the social universe for the current cohort of workers in Western industrialized nations. Do people in all cultures “retire?” Is the notion of retirement universal, or is it alien to non-Western cultures? What is (and is not) relevant subject matter for studies of this topic? Certain basic questions recur in the discourse on retirement. A seeming familiarity with the concept of retirement in our home culture challenges our ability to recognize its specific features and the problems it presents for research.
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Precisely how to define “retirement” in a cross-culturally valid manner for comparative research, what to study, and where to study it, remains problematic for comparative research on social organization and the life course in later life.
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